Ava DuVernay Shares Page From ‘New Gods’

It’s only been a matter of days since it was announced that Ava DuVernay will be helming an adaptation of DC’s New Gods, but it looks the fan-favorite is already preparing.

DuVernay recently shared a photo of a page from Jack Kirby’s The New Gods on her Instagram story, which you can check out a photo of below. The splash page depicts a battle that appears to be straight out of Ragnarok, with text proclaiming that “there came a time when the Old Gods died.”

This particular splash page is interesting, considering the ways that the events of it have factored into the DC Extended Universe in the past. Early speculation had suggested that the battle depicted in the first Justice League trailer – the one that ultimately ended up being men, Amazons, and Atlanteans fighting Steppenwolf – was actually depicting the death of the Old Gods.

This concept of the Old Gods being killed off in the DCEU, and thus ushering in the reign of the New Gods, took on another context after Wonder Woman. The death of the last old god, Ares (David Thewlis), combined with the Mother Box-centric “epilogue” of the film, led some to wonder if Ares’ demise was kicking off the birth of the New Gods.

Following Justice League, the New Gods’ DCEU tenure seemed to get both clearer and more ambiguous. While it’s never said outright, Steppenwolf’s first attack on Earth seemed to take place at some point between Ares killing the Old Gods and the actual events of Wonder Woman, leaving a pretty large chunk of time that the New Gods could’ve been established.

In a way, this gives DuVernay’s film quite a lot of possibilities for how to establish the New Gods’ origin. The film could use Ares killing the Old Gods as a sort of reference point, or take things into a different, Ragnarok-esque direction. And even then, who knows exactly how much the film would touch on the New Gods’ creation, considering the millennia of comic backstory the film could address.

The theatrical cut of Justice League is now available on Blu-ray, DVD, and digital with a couple of deleted scenes and some documentary material. The DC Extended Universe continues with Aquaman on December 21st, Shazam! on April 5, 2019, Wonder Woman 2 on November 1, 2019, Cyborg in 2020, and Green Lantern Corps in 2020.