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I’m not in the business of second-guessing movie-studio executives. But after the bombshell announcement that James Gunn and Peter Safran would be stepping down as the CEOs and chairman of DC Studios, I flashed back
to the moment when I first questioned what these two were up to in their new executive roles.
It was Jan. 31, 2023, the day they announced their grand plans, unveiling the vast roster of DC projects they were going to be shepherding. There were promising ideas in the mix, and there were a lot of ideas (that’s long been a James Gunn asset and liability — his compulsion to give you too much of what he thinks is a good thing). But the one that set off my alarm bell was that Gunn and Safran were planning an all-new “Batman” series, one that, within the realm of Warner Bros., would run alongside “The Batman” and its sequel.
Can you say entertainment headache? I love the character of Batman as much as anyone, but by the time that announcement was made, it felt as if we’d already been through 15 Batmans — a number of which, in the ’90s, felt like reboots. With each new actor (Val Kilmer, George Clooney), the series was starting over, and not all that well (a sensation that would extend into the era when Ben Affleck donned the cowl and husky voice). But, of course, the interchangeable flow of Batmans was magnificently transcended when Christopher Nolan made his “Dark Knight” trilogy. And then, against all odds (since “The Dark Knight” was the greatest superhero movie ever made), Robert Pattinson teamed up with director Matt Reeves to make “The Batman,” and that movie turned out to be spectacularly good. It was clear that Pattinson and Reeves now owned the Batman karma.
But no! After 35 years of revolving-door Batman-franchise identity games, Gunn and Safran were going to do their very own version of “Batman,” competing with “The Batman,” turning the Warner Bros. release schedule into its own mini multiverse. Yes, I realize that Sony had done something similar with the character of Spider-Man (to great success), releasing the “Spider-Verse” series in tandem with the studio’s blockbuster live-action “Spider-Man” movies. But the fact that the “Spider-Verse” films were animated kept them spiritually separate. It felt like the new DC Studios plan was simply destined to add to the Batman clutter. It was an early tip-off to how the Gunn/Safran era would be “ambitious,” but in a way that reflected a certain hubris and naïveté, marked by an ethos of scattershot overkill.
I was, of course, eager to see if the new DC could rise above superhero burnout — the whole feeling of exhaustion and low-grade rerun fever that now hovers over comic-book movies — and present a fresh vision that would engage audiences. Last summer’s “Superman,” which Gunn directed, offered signs of hope. The movie seriously divided critics, but I was far from alone in liking it, and it connected commercially. It felt, all in all, like a qualified success. Yet there’s one aspect of “Superman” that, in hindsight, was telling. In tone, the movie was very busy — jokey and frenetic, jammed with Easter eggs and other self-conscious flourishes. And what all that signified was that James Gunn, launching the opening salvo of DC Studios’ attempt to compete with Marvel, didn’t just want us to love Superman — he wanted us to love him. Gunn has now directed the “Superman” sequel, “Man of Tomorrow,” currently in post-production (it’s set to be released on July, 9, 2027), and this raises a crucial issue: Why was the executive head of DC Studios still so busy directing films anyway? Was that really his job now?
I put the spotlight, and the heat, on Gunn because, as a filmmaker-turned-CEO (not exactly a typical situation in Hollywood), he was clearly the poster boy for the Gunn/Safran era. Yet by the time “Supergirl” came out, a little over four months ago, it felt like he’d already taken his eye off the ball. Gunn had previously stated that there was going to be a rigorous sense of quality control at DC Studios, and the form it would take was this: He and Safran were not going to put a film into production until they had a rock-solid script. This was a direct rebuke to Marvel, which had thrown too many weakly scripted CGI-overkill movies against the wall. So when “Supergirl,” with its listless dystopian plot, its third-rate heroics, and its flat corporate punk-rock “attitude” that was borderline cringe, turned out to have the most lackadaisical script I’d seen in a superhero film in years, it was more than just a one-movie misfire. The artistic and commercial debacle of “Supergirl” put an issue on the table: Was this James Gunn’s idea of quality control?
“Clayface” isn’t a bad superhero horror movie (it’s about as good as something like “Blue Beetle”), but the decision to release a film built around such an offbeat character as DC Studio’s third effort felt like a strategic mistake. The initial box-office reporting on “Clayface” did Gunn and Safran a favor, focusing on the film’s relatively contained budget (just $44 million). But the larger picture is that “Clayface,” which is likely to end up grossing about $65 million domestic (double that internationally), is a movie that barely entered the conversation.
The question of why, exactly, David Ellison decided to relieve Gunn and Safran of their positions probably relates to a number of inside-baseball questions. One contributing rumor is that the studio was less than enthusiastic with how “Man of Tomorrow” was shaping up, and now wants to edit out a lot of Gunn’s Easter-egg ephemera. And when you look at who Ellison has chosen to replace Gunn and Safran, there’s a clear directive there: Jeremy Latcham is a Marvel veteran who, by his own description, now leans toward a faith-based vision, one that’s wholesomely heroic and upbeat. In other words, say goodbye to any vestige of the James Gunn “edge.” Yet if the Gunn edge had truly won an audience, we might be having a different conversation. Taken together, his moves and decisions gave him a (barely) passing grade. But while Gunn is a terrifically talented filmmaker, the truth is that as a corporate big-picture overseer he came off as crucially less than a super man, without so much as a hint of a super vision.
