James Gunn May Have Killed The DCU — But He Was Also The Best Thing To Happen To It
James Gunn's tenure as the co-CEO of DC Studios was controversial, but it was also an earnest attempt at something fresh.
Back in 2018, when the news first broke that James Gunn would be writing and directing what would become The Suicide Squad, it seemed like a perfect match. The announcement came after his very controversial and very public firing from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 over controversial tweets that resurfaced earlier that year. Gunn switching from directing projects for DC versus directing projects for Marvel was an interesting switch, but nobody could’ve predicted what would happen next: just a year after the release of The Suicide Squad, James Gunn and producing partner Peter Safran were hired as the co-CEOs and co-chairmen of DC Studios, where they would spearhead a pathway for yet another reboot and attempt at a shared DC Comics cinematic universe.
Just as quickly as it began, however, it looks to be coming to an end, as the new leadership at the recently merged Paramount Skydance/Warner Bros. As of November 2026, Skydance has replaced Gunn and Safran with former MCU producer Jeremy Latcham, a little over a year after the release of Superman, the first film released under Gunn and Safran’s leadership. And, while his tenure was extremely short-lived, the Gunn era was idiosyncratic in its approach compared to the other failures and successes of the cinematic universe trend, and if it has come to a close, then what better time to reflect on how its ultimate greatest weaknesses were also some of its greatest strengths.
A year and a few months after the release of Superman, the newest attempt at a DC shared universe might already be coming to a close.
An Unorthodox Release Schedule
With three films and three television shows to its name, one of the most frequent criticisms levied at Gunn’s DCU was the bizarre prioritization of smaller, lesser-known characters instead of marquee names like Batman or Wonder Woman. While it worked out perfectly with the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy for Marvel, audiences who had watched Marvel Studios slowly build to The Avengers on a foundation of solo releases for each team member were left flabbergasted by Gunn’s decision to follow up Superman with a second season of Peacemaker, a Supergirl film, and Clayface, a movie about a Batman villain featuring no Batman. From the perspective of the Ellisons, the would-be monarchs with aspirations of turning DC into a billion-dollar franchise, it makes sense that anything not culminating in a massive Justice League event film would be seen as frivolous and a bad investment.
But on the flip side, while it maybe wasn’t the most conducive approach for building a cinematic universe, Gunn’s DCU is a very messy but earnest attempt at a comic book universe made by someone who loves the irreverence of the medium instead of a Hollywood executive. Characters like Polka Dot Man, Judomaster and Mister Terrific are far from the biggest names in the DC Universe, but they’re eccentric characters with their own patchwork histories that reflect how vast and ingenious comic book universes can really be, as opposed to yet another Batman movie that would definitely print money but would ultimately be more of the same.
A concrete Wonder Woman movie should have maybe been an earlier priority, but there’s no reason that couldn’t have existed alongside a Mister Terrific spin-off show, or a Swamp Thing film.
Projects focused on C-list characters was a understandable attempt to showcase some of DC’s weirder narrative pockets, even though the big names probably would have turned a bigger profit.
A Lack of Tonal Consistency
For better or worse, the MCU has been trapped with the sardonic, wise-cracking comedic voice ushered in by Joss Whedon with The Avengers. For as much talk as Kevin Feige has done about each film in the franchise feeling distinct and creator-driven, they’re all action-comedies with humor that exists in mostly the same register across each project. The lack of tonal variation certainly doesn’t help complaints about superhero movie fatigue, but it does provide a mostly winning formula and a cohesive brand identity.
One of the major promises that Gunn made when assuming his leadership position was that each film he greenlit would have its own voice and vision, and it’s a promise that he mostly stuck to. Sure, Superman was filled with his usual predilections and humor (like action sequences set to a kitschy needle drop or a fictional Ska band named The Mighty Crabjoys), but it also didn’t feel like The Suicide Squad or Peacemaker. Whether or not things would be different if Lanterns had been a CGI-heavy space opera appropriate for younger audiences instead of a TV-MA True Detective clone remains to be seen, but it certainly adds a lot of texture and diversity to your franchise when you can have a pseudo-western Mad Max-adjacent space adventure come out in the same year as a grim body horror throwback.
The DCU’s loose approach to tonal rigidity made it a breath of fresh air in comparison to the MCU.
A Refusal To Prioritize Continuity
Since the collapse of Zack Snyder’s DCEU franchise, Warner Bros. and DC Comics have been trapped in a limbo of Schroedinger’s Canon. After the theatrical cut of Justice League, Warner Bros. released several sequels and spin-offs that still held signifiers of Snyder’s budding universe but were untethered to that specific continuity; examples are Black Adam and The Flash. This is actually how Gunn’s DCU came to life – The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker season 1 were technically projects from that uncharted era of the DCEU, and were retroactively added to the canon of Gunn’s DCU.
This is perhaps a deliberate inconsistency that followed the DCU all the way until now, most recently with the implication that the Clayface in the self-titled movie is the same one who appeared in the Creature Commandos animated show. Clarity is certainly important to a sprawling cinematic universe, and some of the retcons made by Gunn only served to muddy the narrative waters of his infant franchise, but can anyone say that The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker, two relatively well-regarded projects, actually make the DCU worse off because of their inclusion? Almost two decades in, it’s easy to see the problems created by the MCU’s “everything is connected” approach, and while there’s definitely a middle ground to be found, there was something freeing about the idea of a comic book franchise leaning towards interesting ideas at the expense of a rigorous, airtight sense of continuity.
The Suicide Squad started life as a direct sequel to the original 2016 film, but Gunn wisely retconned it as the earliest project in his new canon.
Even though Gunn and Safran are no longer calling the shots, their DC era isn’t totally over yet — Man of Tomorrow is still being released next year, and although it’s likely, it’s not yet officially confirmed whether or not the Ellisons will be completely overhauling the plans that were already in motion. Nevertheless, the thought of saying goodbye to this bizarre attempt at a franchise is a little bittersweet; Gunn’s DC Universe was far from perfect, but it was an interesting experiment in trying to build a cinematic universe without yielding to the MCU structure as the definitive “right way.”
It may not be an experiment that paid off the way they’d hoped, but history might remember it as a more unique and risk-taking affair than the likely safe, familiar formula that will undoubtedly come with a full reboot.
