It’s still early days for the DC Universe. The highly anticipated, multimedia franchise hasn’t even released its first film yet (that’ll be 2025’s Superman) and is only now on the verge of rolling out its debut TV show, an animated Suicide Squad spin-off titled Creature Commandos. Nonetheless, DC Studios co-CEO James Gunn already has some very clear ideas about what he wants the DCU to be, as well as what he doesn’t want it to be.
In an interview with Collider, Gunn said that he doesn’t want the interconnectivity of the DCU to bog down the franchise or make viewers feel like they need to do “homework” in order to keep up with it. “A lot of what DC is, and the fun for me, really, is in the world-building, not just the story-building. I don’t think of DCU as being, ‘Oh, this is a story we’re telling over multiple films and TV shows about one big bad.’ I don’t want to have to do, as an audience member, the homework to have to see every single thing,” Gunn explained. “It is more of a connected universe that exists within one place, which is the DCU.”
Gunn’s comments may come as a surprise to some comic book fans. Previously, the filmmaker has talked heavily about the planned cohesiveness of the DCU, even going so far as to promise that those who voice animated versions of certain characters will usually be the same actors who play whatever flesh-and-blood iterations of them appear in the franchise’s live-action projects. That said, while it sounds like Gunn wants to make sure there are very few continuity issues within the DCU (including in its casting choices), he has also now made it clear that he doesn’t want the franchise’s projects to be weighed down by issues of canon or crossover-style storytelling.
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That should come as a bit of a relief, considering that other multimedia franchises — namely, the Marvel Cinematic Universe — have struggled in recent years to manage the increasingly unwieldy size of their multi-year stories and ever-growing in-universe histories. It sounds like that’s one problem that, despite its sizable lineup of forthcoming projects, the DC Universe is already being primed to avoid.
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Alex is a writer and critic who has been writing about and reviewing movies and TV at Digital Trends since 2022. He was…
Suicide Squad director David Ayer defends his support of James Gunn’s Superman
DC Extended Universe auteur Zack Snyder may have gotten the chance to release his original version of Justice League back in 2021, but a similar opportunity has not yet been extended to Suicide Squad director David Ayer. The filmmaker’s 2016 comic book movie was, like Snyder’s Justice League, heavily tampered with behind the scenes, and Ayer has remained adamant that the version of Suicide Squad that was theatrically released differs greatly from his original, preferred iteration.
The ongoing wait for a release of his cut of Suicide Squad hasn’t stopped Ayer, however, from publicly voicing his support for DC Studios co-CEO James Gunn’s Superman. On December 17, Ayer asked fans not to divert any attention away from the release of the first Superman trailer by launching another Suicide Squad campaign in his honor, writing, “I’m excited to see the trailer and have heard through the rumor mill it’s pretty incredible.” His tweet was, unfortunately, met with negativity from certain fans, who took issue with the courtesy he was trying to extend to Gunn and, by extension, DC Studios’ new DC Universe.
Captain America 4 director says it’s great to return to a ‘rage monster’ Hulk
In Captain America: Brave New World, Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford) isn’t just going to be electepresident of the United States — he’s also going to transform at one point in the film into a red-skinned Hulk. The character’s angry transformation has been teased heavily in the early Captain America: Brave New World trailers, and for good reason. Not only have comic book fans been waiting years to see a version of the Red Hulk in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but the character’s climactic showdown with Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) also looks like it is going to be Brave New World’s biggest set piece.
In a recent interview with Empire, Brave New World director Julius Onah called Ford’s performance in the film “mind-blowing.” He added “All of us on set were like, ‘Holy f**king s**t, he nailed it.'” While Marvel has mined plenty of humor and drama out of Bruce Banner’s (Mark Ruffalo) transformation into a smarter Hulk in Avengers: Endgame, Onah says it was fun for him to bring an angry, uncontrollable Hulk back to the MCU. “It’s really great to get back to a Hulk that is just f**king breaking s**t,” the director confessed, calling Ford’s Red Hulk “a rage monster.”
James Gunn refutes claim that certain characters are too niche for the DC Universe
Momentum has been slowly building for well over a year now for James Gunn and Peter Safran’s new DC Universe. The multimedia, DC Comics-inspired franchise hasn’t officially begun, though. That long-awaited moment will come when the new Gunn-created animated Suicide Squad spinoff TV series, Creature Commandos, premieres December 5 on Max. Nonetheless, Gunn is already not only receiving criticisms from some comic book readers and superhero fans but also pushing back against certain claims.
The DC Studios co-CEO did that very thing when one fan recently argued on Threads that Gunn’s decision to greenlight projects about “niche” characters like Sgt. Rock and Swamp Thing makes it seem like he’s only “making the DCU for hardcore comic book readers and not for the general audience.” In response, Gunn wrote, “Don’t put Swamp Thing in the corner. That’s a project in development we’ve actually announced, and he’s an incredibly well-known character with not only some of the greatest comics of all time but [also] a successful film series and his own TV show, something that could be said of only a very small handful of DC characters.”