DC Studios Has Me Worried About the State of the DCU

Over the final week of February 2025, DC Studios heads James Gunn and Peter Safran brought a collective of journalists out to hear about further plans for the DC Universe that will begin (on the big screen at least) with July’s Superman. Twenty-five months after Gunn first announced the titles comprising the DCU’s first phase, “Gods and Monsters,” one might’ve expected some grand new reveals. Instead, the press event didn’t divulge much new information about the DC Universe. Titles in development two years ago like The Authority and The Brave and The Bold are still stewing. New casting announcements were nonexistent.

The fate of the DC Universe will really be determined once Superman soars into theaters and we get a clear view of how audiences respond to it. However, right now, DC Studios has got me more than a tad worried about the future of this franchise. Gunn and Safran’s plans are starting to evoke the DC Extended Universe a bit too much for comfort.

A Scattershot DC Universe Future

In January 2023, right after announcing the first-ever DC Universe projects, Gunn remarked that the last decade of DC Comics adaptations had been “messed up.” For Gunn, these characters had been tossed around willy-nilly, resulting in different continuities like the Arrowverse, split points in the DCEU depending on which cut of Justice League you were watching, and more. “They were just giving away IP like they were party favors to any creators that smiled at them,” Gunn declared as he expressed hopes for a more cohesive shared universe in the future.

Cut to two years later, and some of the ambitions for the DC Universe are starting to resemble aspects of the DCEU Gunn once criticized. Chiefly, there’s that solo Clayface movie, an indication that we’re in for another era of DC movies obsessed with live-action solo movies for Batman villains rather than fleshing out more obscure comic book characters. Gunn previously declared that he never planned for a Clayface feature, but Mike Flanagan’s script convinced him to green-light the movie. Unlike Joker, Clayface will exist in a broader continuity, but that already sounds like treating these properties like “party favors” once again.

[RELATED: James Gunn Teases His Favorite DC Project (And It Hasn’t Been Announced)]

Meanwhile, Gunn and Safran frustratingly confirmed that most of the original slate of DC Studios films are on the back burner for now. Instead, new projects that have just randomly cropped up like Sgt. Rock and Clayface are priorities. On the one hand, it’s good that the DC Universe isn’t just beholden to release dates or press announcements. If a movie isn’t shaping up well, the label won’t rush it into existence. On the other hand, it’s also bizarre that live-action DC movies are once again in an existence defined by throwing things at the wall. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

The DCU Is In a Holding Pattern Until Superman

The biggest takeaway from this event is that the DC Universe appears to be in an awkward limbo until Superman comes out. Streaming shows like Peacemaker, Creature Commandos, and Lanterns are moving ahead, but theatrical movies are much more scattershot. Cameras are only rolling on Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, and everything beyond that Superman spinoff is nebulously defined (Clayface doesn’t even have a leading man yet). There’s a strange lack of confidence here, especially in contrast to how gusto Gunn was in announcing DC Studios movies two years ago.

Then again, in January 2023, Warner Bros. hadn’t experienced a quartet of DCEU movies that lost the studio millions. Marvel Studios, meanwhile, hadn’t yet experienced its massive money-losers Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and The Marvels. The American superhero movie is in a fragile place right now. Gunn and company may be waiting to see if Superman becomes the next Deadpool & Wolverine or Captain America: Brave New World before really committing to a deluge of theatrical DC movies. That approach, though, has left DC Studios in a weird state similar to the DC Extended Universe, where the future was always so hard to figure out or discern.

Even Gunn and Safran’s comments on constantly reassuring people that the DC Universe is in a stable place felt worrisome. Much like a sneaky person misguidedly reassuring you there’s nothing hidden behind their back, these constant declarations that “we’re all fine here now, how are you?” just instilled more suspicion. Perhaps in just a few months, Superman will launch as a massive phenomenon and these thoughts will be as outdated as declarations from 1982 that E.T. won’t stand the test of time. In this moment, though, Gunn and Safran’s awkward press conference just inspired more trepidation about the DC Universe than excitement, especially since this franchise is beginning to evoke the saga it was meant to improve on.