Challengers Director Rumored to Be in Talks for DCU Project

James Gunn and Peter Safran’s DC Universe could be courting a surprising director. On Tuesday, a new report from Jeff Sneider claimed that Luca Guadagnino, who most recently directed the hit drama Challengers, has been in talks to direct a project within DC Studios’ new DCU. The report stresses that Guadagnino is not officially attached to any of the franchise’s projects, just that there is “mutual interest” between the two parties, and that he is high on Gunn and Safran’s list of potential directors they have met with. 

It is unclear at this point if Guadagnino, who has also directed Call Me By Your Name and the upcoming Queer, would ultimately direct a movie or a television series in the DCU. It is also unknown whether or not the project is wholly new or among the ten titles that Gunn and Safran announced in early 2023. At the moment, the only confirmed film in the DCU that does not yet have a director attached is The Authority, as Gunn is directing 2025’s Superman, Craig Gillespie is directing 2026’s Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, James Mangold is attached to Swamp Thing, and Andy Muschietti is attached to The Brave and the Bold.

What Is on the DC Universe Slate?

The initial DC Studios slate will include 2025’s Superman, 2026’s Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, and currently-undated movies The Brave and the Bold, Swamp Thing, and The Authority. It will also include the HBO Max television shows Waller, Booster Gold, Lanterns, Paradise Lost, and an animated Creature Commandos series. Reports have indicated that a live-action Teen Titans movie and an animated Jurassic League movie are in the works at DC Studios, although neither have been publicly confirmed.

“A lot of people think it’s going to be Marvel 2.0, and definitely I learned a lot of stuff at Marvel. I think that we have a lot of differences,” Gunn explained in 2023. “We are telling a big, huge, central story that is like Marvel, except for, I think that we’re a lot more planned out than Marvel from the beginning because we’ve gotten a group of writers together to work that story out completely. But we’re also creating a universe that is like Star Wars, where there’s different times, different places, different things, or Game of Thrones, where characters are a little bit more morally complex.”