The world of DC adaptations is headed down a new path, with James Gunn and Peter Safran shepherding DC Studios in the coming years. Earlier this year, the duo announced their plans for a string of movies and Max-exclusive television shows set in a singular DC Universe, with the promise of additional standalone projects like sequels to The Batman and Joker set under a DC Elseworlds banner. While a number of DC-inspired projects have existed as disparate parts in recent years, Gunn recently promises that these titles will have more cohesive branding going forward.
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In a recent post on the social media platform Threads, Gunn confirmed that Elseworlds will get an official logo, separate from the planned DC Studios and DC Universe fanfare.
What Is DC Elseworlds?
Elseworlds draws its name from the comic imprint of the same name, which DC launched in 1989 to officially canonize its stories set in alternate realities. As the opening epitaph of every Elseworlds comic states, “In Elseworlds, heroes are taken from their usual settings and put into strange times and places—some that have existed, or might have existed, and others that can’t, couldn’t or shouldn’t exist. The result: stories that make characters who are as familiar as yesterday seem as fresh as tomorrow.” Over the years, the title has birthed beloved series like Gotham by Gaslight, Kingdom Come, Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham, JLA: The Nail, and JSA: The Liberty Files. The name has also been used on one of the Arrowverse’s DC crossovers.
It was announced earlier this year that the imprint itself will relaunch in 2024, becoming the home of new titles and existing ones such as Dark Knights of Steel and DC vs. Vampires.
What Is On the DC Universe Slate?
As Gunn and Safran revealed earlier this year, the initial DC Studios slate for “Gods and Monsters” will include movies for Superman: Legacy, The Brave and the Bold, Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, Swamp Thing, and The Authority. It will include the HBO Max television shows Waller, Booster Gold, Lanterns, Paradise Lost, and an animated Creature Commandos series.
“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 at the time. “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.”
What do you think of James Gunn’s update about DC’s Elseworlds banner? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!
