Comic Books
Future Of DC Universe and Upcoming Slate From DC Studios Reveals First Chapter – ‘Gods and Monsters’
DC Fans received big news on Tuesday when James Gunn announced plans for DC Studios.
James Gunn and Peter Safran have unveiled the first ten interconnected DC Studios projects—five movies and five HBO Max TV series. All ten of them are set within the same shared universe and will frequently share characters. However, while not included below, there will be films set outside the shared continuity—like the already announced Joker: Folie à Deux from director Todd Phillips and Matt Reeves’ upcoming The Batman sequel.
“The DCU’s a multiverse, but we’re going to be focusing on one universe from that multiverse,” explains Safran. “And if something isn’t DCU, we’re going to make that very clear. So, strictly adult fare like Todd Phillips’ Joker, or kids animation like Teen Titans Go!, we’re going to make it very clear that those are DC Elseworlds, just the same way that they do it in the comic books.”
But the focus is on the core, connected DC Universe and the initial shows and TV series that will help it take shape on the screen. Familiar characters like Superman and Batman are obviously represented, but Gunn, Safran and the creative teams they’ve been working with are pulling from unexpected corners of the DC Universe as well.
“Here at DC, we have Metropolis, Gotham, Themyscira, Atlantis, Bialya… This is the world that we’re creating,” Gunn shares. “We’re coming into a world where superheroes exist and have existed for some time in one form or another, and that’s the universe. We are telling a big, huge central story that is like Marvel, except that I think we’re a lot more planned out than Marvel from the beginning because we’ve gotten a group of writers together to work the story out completely.”
While all ten of the below projects are in active development, some are further along than others and both Gunn and Safran emphasize that things may shift around.
“What we’re starting with is the first part of the first chapter of our universe,” reveals Safran. “That first chapter’s called ‘Gods and Monsters.’ Many of the following projects are already being worked on, but we’re remaining flexible and we’re going to adjust because we’re never going to put a project into production before the script is right. This is a general timeline, but there will be flexibility within it.”
Below, both Gunn and Safran share some details and the thought behind the ten new DC movies and TV series revealed on January 31.
Creature Commandos
Animated HBO Max series
James Gunn: The first series that we’re doing, and I’ve already written the entire series, is Creature Commandos. This is an animated TV series and this is art from the animation company that’s doing it. Creature Commandos is based on the great team from DC.
What we’re doing with the DCU is we’re having animation tied directly into live action. Television, movies and games all intertwine within the same universe. We’re going to cast actors that are going to be able to play the characters in this, as well as in other things, some of which we’ve already cast. I’ve written all seven episodes of this show and it’s in production now.
In the image (going from left to right), that’s Rick Flag, Sr. He’s going to show up in other stuff. Then Nina Mazursky. Doctor Phosphorus, a Batman villain. Frankenstein—Eric Frankenstein, specifically. The Bride of Frankenstein, who’s the lead. Finally, G.I. Robot and Weasel.
Waller
Live action HBO Max series
Gunn: Viola Davis is coming back as her character, Amanda Waller. This is also going to have some of the Peacemaker team in it as regulars on the show. This basically follows up Peacemaker. We have two great creatives working on it: Christal Henry, who was a writer on Watchmen, and Jeremy Carver who created Doom Patrol. They have this incredibly marvelous story worked out that I think is really fantastic.
Peter Safran: This series will sit between Peacemaker season one and season two.
Superman: Legacy
Live action movie
Safran: (This) is really the launch of the DCU. The first two projects are an amuse-bouche for what’s coming up with Superman: Legacy. James is currently writing it. We’re hoping that he will direct it. It’s not an origin story. It focuses on Superman balancing his Kryptonian heritage with his human upbringing. Superman represents truth, justice and the American way. He is kindness in a world that thinks of kindness as old fashioned.
Gunn: With our stories, we want to take it away from good guy vs. bad guy. There are really good—almost saintly—people and Superman is among them. There are really terrible villains like Gorilla Grodd or the Joker. And then there’s everybody in between them, so there are all these shades of gray which allow us to tell complex stories.
Safran: And we have a release date for this—July 11, 2025.
Lanterns
Live action HBO Max series
Safran: Our next project is another television series. We call it Lanterns and it is starring two of our favorite Green Lanterns—Hal Jordan and John Stewart. It’s going to be with HBO Max, as all of our series are that we’re going to talk about today. It is more of a True Detective-type mystery with our two Lanterns. A terrestrial-based mystery—
Gunn: —that leads into the overall story that we’re telling throughout the different movies and television shows. We find this ancient horror on Earth, and these guys are basically supercops on “Precinct Earth.”
Safran: The story is going to weave back and forth between the films and the television shows. Peacemaker is a good example of how that works, and that’s what we’re going to do with this big overarching story that we’re telling.
The Authority
Live action movie
Gunn: This is one of my real passion projects. I’ve been working really hard on it with the writers and we’re starting to put together the entire story. This is a big movie. I don’t know how many of you are familiar with the Authority. They’re WildStorm characters. WildStorm was a comics imprint that was bought by DC that I really love. We’re moving a lot of these WildStorm characters into the DCU.
The Authority’s a very different kind of superhero story. They are basically good-intentioned, but they think that the world is completely broken and the only way to fix it is to take things into their own hands, whether that means killing people, destroying heads of state, changing governments—basically, whatever they want to do to make the world better. We’ll see how that journey goes for them.
There are morally gray characters (in our DCU), of which these are.
PS: We love that they think the ends justify the means and they’re the ones that decide what the right ends are.
Paradise Lost
Live action HBO Max series
Safran: This is a Game of Thrones-type story about Themyscira/Paradise Island, home of the Amazons and the birthplace of Wonder Woman. This involves all of the darkness, drama and political intrigue behind this society of only women.
Gunn: It’s an origin story of how this society of women came about. What does it mean? What are their politics like? What are their rules? Who’s in charge? What are the games that they play with each other to get to the top? I think it’s really exciting.
Safran: The events really take place before Diana’s birth.
The Brave and the Bold
Live action movie
Gunn: This is the introduction of the DCU’s Batman. It is not Robert Pattinson. It is not Ben Affleck. We’re working with Robert on The Batman – Part II with Matt Reeves, and we’re working with Ben Affleck, who has been a part of our team trying to bring things together and he really wants to direct one of our projects. We’re excited for him to do that.
This is a story of Damian Wayne, who’s Batman’s actual son that he didn’t know existed for the first eight to ten years of his life. He was raised as a little murderer and assassin. He’s my favorite Robin. It’s based on the Grant Morrison comic run, which is one of my favorite Batman runs. We’re putting it all together right now.
Safran: This is going to feature other members of the extended Bat-Family. Just because we feel like they’ve been left out of the Batman stories in the theater for far too long.
Booster Gold
Live action HBO Max series
Safran: A total fan favorite, as you know. A loser from the future who uses his basic future technology to come back to today to pretend to be a superhero.
Gunn: I think of it as basically the story of a superhero’s imposter syndrome. How do you deal with that? (It’s about) how he tries to use this future technology to be loved by the people of today and what is really at the base of that. It’s a character story that’s going to be a very different type of show, and we’re talking to an actor about it now.
Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow
Live action movie
Gunn: This is based on Tom King (and Bilquis Evely)’s wonderful comic. Tom has been one of the architects of this entire situation. He’s been one of the guys in the room with us, along with four or five other writers. I love his take on these characters. He just turns them slightly to be something very unique.
In our story, we have Superman who was sent to Earth and raised by incredibly loving parents. Kara was on Krypton. She was on a piece of Krypton that drifted away from the planet and she lived there for the first fourteen years of her life in a horrible situation where she watched everyone around her die. So, she’s a much harsher and more f*cked up Supergirl than you’ve been used to thus far.
Swamp Thing
Live action movie
Safran: The final film we wanted to talk about is Swamp Thing. We bring it up because it’s important to point out that in these stories, although they’re interconnected, they’re not all tonally the same. Each set of filmmakers bring their own aesthetic to these films, and the fun is seeing how these tonally different works mash up in the future.
This is a film that will investigate the dark origins of Swamp Thing.
Gunn: We are actually developing a few other things as well, but for one reason or another, we can’t say them. This is the first batch of stuff, but there may be a couple of surprises to come.
The recently hired Co-Chairmen and CEOs of the new DC Studios have the weight of the universe on their shoulders—the DC Universe, that is. But it’s okay, they have plenty of superhero friends they can call on for assistance, from Superman and Batman, to Swamp Thing and Booster Gold, to…well, pretty much everyone ever created for DC.
Since being placed in charge of DC’s upcoming slate of films and TV series, the two newly minted execs had to hit the ground running, kickstarting the development process for their first batch of projects—ten of which were announced — while shepherding already existing DC films and TV shows forward. Unsurprisingly, finding ways for it all to coexist was not without its challenges, but by Gunn’s own admission, they were aided by some good fortune.
“I think that we’ve gotten lucky with the next four movies because we have Shazam, which leads into Flash, which resets everything, which then goes into Blue Beetle, which is totally disconnected (from everything that came before) and can be a part of the DCU, which goes into Aquaman, which leads into Superman: Legacy, our first big project,” he explains. “But the one thing that we can promise is that everything from our first project forward will be canon and will be connected. We’re using some actors from the past, we’re not using other actors from the past, but everything from that moment forward will be connected and consistent.”
A key part of DC’s film and television on the near horizon amounts to a combination of both new and already established. Along with new projects like Superman: Legacy, Creature Commandos, The Brave and the Bold and The Authority, fans can expect a few highly anticipated follow-ups, like director Matt Reeves’ The Batman – Part II, which got a release date of October 3, 2025.
It’s a lot to keep track of, even for superfans like us, so Gunn and Safran recently answered some questions about everything brewing at DC Studios to help give fans a sense of how it will all come together.
On why a shared universe is the right approach going forward…
Peter Safran: DC has had great individual movies over the years, but we think that what the audience really appreciates and needs is a connected universe. It minimizes audience confusion and it maximizes their connectivity to it across all the platforms.
James Gunn: I think that’s something that people love. I know that from my own experience. But again, we do have Elseworlds tales we’re telling. The bar for an Elseworlds tale is going to be higher than the bar for a movie within the DCU. Not that we’re not always going to have a high bar, but it’s got to be something really special for us to tell that story outside of our regular continuity and to spend the money to make it.
On how many movies they’re aiming for each year…
Safran: Probably two movies and two HBO Max series per year.
About how they decide which medium to use for which project…
Gunn: It’s all story-based. To us, storytelling is 100% king. So, if it’s a story that’s more complicated, like the Lanterns or Waller story, or has more of an independent TV vibe, like Booster Gold, then that’s more suited for television. It has to do with tone, storytelling and if it’s something that we can tell in two hours and ten minutes. Or is it something that we need seven, eight or nine hours for?
Safran: We certainly debated a couple of these projects and where they fit better, but ultimately, this is where we landed.
On how they decide on ratings and whether something should be live action or animated…
Gunn: It depends on the story. We’re going to give every story what it deserves. Some things we know. Superman is definitely something we know we’d like to be PG-13, so I’m going to make sure it is. Other things, like the Waller TV show, are a little bit more mature. And we have other things that are aimed a bit more at young women or at kids that are still within this world.
Safran: And in terms of animation, it’s sometimes just a fun way to introduce characters or introduce stories that would frankly be too expensive to be done otherwise.
Gunn: Creature Commandos is a good example of that.
Safran: With Creature Commandos, they’re all digital characters.
On whether they’re planning any big, Justice League-type crossover events…
Gunn: Everything’s crossing over throughout. These characters are all interacting throughout the different stories.
Now, it doesn’t necessarily mean always. Brave and the Bold may just be Batman, Robin and the characters involved in that. But I know a lot of other times these characters cross around. In Creature Commandos, one of the main characters shows up in Waller.
About the role of that games might play in the shared universe…
Gunn: It’s not like we’re going to have the Superman movie come out and have this Superman game come out. It’s more like we’ll have the Superman film come out, then maybe two years later, we have the Supergirl movie coming out. So, what’s the story in between there? Is there a Krypto game that we can play that comes in between them? Something that’s still set in the world with these characters, but is its own thing. We want to give the prominence to games that they deserve.
Whether Matt Reeves’ Batman films will continue…
Gunn: Yes. Matt is working on The Batman – Part II, which he thinks of as a Batman crime saga that also includes the Penguin TV series. The Batman is its own thing. Matt’s hard at work on it. He came in and pitched us some amazing stuff the other day, so our plan is for that to continue.
Safran: Also, The Batman’s not a stepchild. It’s all under DC. We are fully invested in the success of The Batman just like we are everything else.
Gunn: Of course, everything’s going to be balanced so The Brave and the Bold is not going to be coming out in the same six month period as The Batman.
About the Jason Momoa Lobo rumors…
Gunn: Jason will not play two characters.
Safran: It’s too early to say. Jason always thought Aquaman was a trilogy in his own mind, but he also loves Lobo. He’s been very clear about that too. He’s never going to play two characters…
Gunn: …but we’ll figure it out after Aquaman 2.
On whether the animated movies from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment will continue…
Gunn: We’re dealing with all that. Some of that stuff will continue as Elseworlds, but a lot of other stuff we’re starting to bring into animation with (Warner Bros. Animation President) Sam Register so that we’ll have things that are connected with this. I think there have been a lot of really marvelous DC cartoons, so we’re going to keep moving forward with that.
On whether they had to make any changes to The Flash…
Safran: We had input on it for sure, but there’s nothing we had to do in order to set up our universe.
Gunn: We’re very close to Andy Muschietti and Barbara Muschietti, the director and producer of The Flash. Andy’s going to be doing some more stuff for us.
About the writers helping to build this story and universe…
Gunn: We have Tom King. He has been my partner throughout all of this. He was giving me answers to sh*t before I took the job. So it’s me; him; Christal Henry, who worked on Watchmen; Christina Hodson, who wrote The Flash; Drew Goddard, who you probably know; and Jeremy Slater, who just did Moon Knight. That’s the group of people we’ve been meeting with and putting all of this together.
On the difference between DC Studios projects…
Gunn: Even though this is all a connected universe, it’s really important to me that the individual writers and directors on the projects give their own self-expression to it, just like they do in the comics. Everything doesn’t always look the same. Everything doesn’t always have the same expression. Different artists bring remarkably different looks, feels and tones. This is not the Gunnverse.
I want each project to have the feelings of the individual artist that’s working on it and to give them a lot of freedom—as long as it works—to create something special because what I’ve found through Marvel, what wasn’t exciting was when movies were tonally the same. What was exciting was when you had something like Guardians come out and everyone was like, “How is this raccoon going to be dealing with this God of Thunder? That’s going to be weird.”
But then when you actually see the mash-up happen, that’s what makes it so fun. So, to see seemingly tonally incongruent things come together is part of the fun of all this.
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