It has been a month since James Gunn and Peter Safran outlined their plans for DC Studios, unveiling the first projects they have in the works as co-CEOs of the imprint. The centerpiece of the announcement was ten movies and HBO Max-exclusive television shows that will be part of a new DC Universe, which hopes to be interconnected and celebratory in a way it had not in the past. But as Safran and Gunn confirmed, both to reporters and in the official slate announcement, there will still be projects outside of the continuity of the main DCU, which will be classified accordingly under the comic-accurate moniker of Elseworlds.
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“Yeah. And the DCU is a multiverse, but we’re going to be focusing on one universe from that multiverse,” Safran explained at the time. “And if something isn’t DCU, we’re going to make that very clear. So strictly adult fair, like Todd Phillips’ Joker or kids’ animation like Teen Titans Go!, we’re going make it very clear that those are DC Elseworlds, just the same way they’ve were doing in the comic books.”
While we’re still a ways away from seeing how both DCU and Elseworlds projects will be branded under Gunn and Safran, the notion of having a clear and definable label to support these out-of-continuity projects might be among the smartest decisions of this new era.
What is DC’s Elseworlds?
The Elseworlds imprint began to appear in the pages of DC’s comics in 1989, as a way to establish stories that existed outside of the new (and hypothetically-neater) post-Crisis on Infinite Earths world. The title was used consistently in the years that followed, in now-iconic titles like Kingdom Come, Batman: Gotham By Gaslight, Son of Superman, Superman: Red Son, and Justice League: The Nail. When a new multiverse was established in the comics in 52, many of its alternate Earths ended up being now-canonized Elseworlds universes, a trend that still remains to this day.
Why does DC Elseworlds matter?
When Gunn and Safran assumed their new roles, it was clear that whatever they crafted would not be the only DC adaptations to come to fruition. Matt Reeves’ The Batman universe was already getting a proper sequel and at least one television spinoff, 2019’s billion-dollar Joker movie was getting a musical sequel co-starring Lady Gaga, Teen Titans Go! and DC Super Hero Girls are still thriving, and Netflix’s The Sandman had just recently gotten renewed for more episodes. All of these projects, and a handful of others, arguably thrive on the periphery of the larger DC mythos, so it was safe to assume that none of them would become a foundation for Gunn and Safran’s new canon.
But that doesn’t mean that these movies and television shows have to be shunned off to the side, or seen as inherently lesser-than projects compared to what will be arriving in the DCU, a dichotomy that other major franchises have struggled with in recent years. Despite the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the recent folding-in of franchises like the X-Men and the Fantastic Four, there are still a smattering of projects that exist outside of that canon. These include animated series like Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, M.O.D.O.K., and Spidey and His Amazing Friends, which are only sold as a Marvel adaptation if they happen to have “Marvel’s” placed in front of their full titles (a title that, as the newly-greenlit second season of Hit-Monkey proves, can easily be removed). Sony’s repeated attempts to name its disparately-connected crop of Spider-Man-adjacent movies is an even clunkier example of trying and failing to sell non-MCU Marvel projects to audiences. Even projects made by Marvel Studios and appearing to exist in the MCU, like Spider-Man: Freshman Year and I Am Groot, have been the subject of endless debates about whether or not they’re “canon.” As a result, the conversation around these movies and shows can change, and fans can — intentionally or otherwise — brush off the projects that don’t “matter”, or get confused about which ones do or don’t tie into each other. With live-acton superhero canon only getting more and more complicated, and the threat of “superhero fatigue” always at bay, not having consistent branding definitely doesn’t help.
How can DC Elseworlds work?
Again, we’re still a ways away from seeing the fruits of Gunn and Safran’s labor, much less what the actual branding initiatives will look like for DC Universe and DC Elseworlds projects. But being able to use that latter banner on future standalone projects can help convey that even though they’re not in the main DCU, they still matter and are worth viewers’ times. Sure, there will surely still be viewers who get confused about The Batman Part II and Joker: Folie a Deux, and viewers who refuse to let Teen Titans Go! into their hearts. But the Elseworlds banner provides an easy shorthand to let fans (and potential fans) know that the project in question is unabashedly part of the DC brand, and should be treated with reverence and excitement regardless of its place in a larger canon. DC had already been taking that approach, whether through the virtual DC FanDome convention or through recent comic classifications of the multiverse, but now there is a clear way to do it across the board.
And on top of that, the Elseworlds banner can (and, according to Gunn, will) lead to new Elseworlds projects set into motion by DC Studios. That concept has intrigued fans ever since Joker was greenlit and was rumored to start an out-of-continuity “DC Black” label, but nothing had come to pass yet. But now, it doesn’t seem completely out of the question that we could eventually get a blockbuster take on things like Bombshells, Gotham by Gaslight — or Kingdom Come, which Gunn has repeatedly acknowledged on social media since taking the DC Studios job. While there are a number of reasons for DC fans to be hyped for DC Studios’ future, the definitive but endless possibilities of the Elseworlds banner could be something genuinely special.
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