James Gunn’s DC Studios Just Killed a DCU Project (and It’s for the Best)

In brightest day, in blackest night, no screenplay shall escape James Gunn‘s sight. “The one thing that we’re gonna do at DC is — no matter what — we’re going to wait until the screenplays and the teleplays are ready before we shoot them,” the Superman writer-director, who serves as co-chairman and CEO of DC Studios with producer Peter Safran, said last year. “And I’m not going to shoot anything until I’m happy with it.” That includes an already greenlit movie that was axed because the script wasn’t production ready.

“We just killed a project. Everybody wanted to make the movie. It was greenlit, ready to go. The screenplay wasn’t ready,” Gunn told Rolling Stone. “And I couldn’t do a movie where the screenplay’s not good.”

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While Gunn didn’t name the DC Studios movie that’s deader than the Waynes, it was widely reported in April that the Sgt. Rock movie that was in the works with Queer and Challengers director Luca Guadagnino is no longer in development at the studio.

According to insiders, a planned summer shooting start was untenable, and so the World War II movie pressed pause. It was reported that the hope now is to start production on Sgt. Rock in 2026.

Superman, written by Gunn, leads a DC Studios film slate that includes Supergirl (penned by Ana Nogueira), Clayface (Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini), and The Batman sequel (Matt Reeves & Mattson Tomlin). On the television side, there’s season 2 of HBO Max’s Peacemaker, also scripted by Gunn and HBO’s Lanterns, which started production in February with a pilot script co-written by Tom King (Batman), Damon Lindelof (Lost), and showrunner Chris Mundy (Ozark).

“We’ve been really lucky so far, because Supergirl’s script was so f—ing good off the bat. And then Lanterns came in, and the script was so f—ing good. Clayface, same thing. So f—ing good,” Gunn continued. “So we have these scripts that we’ve been really lucky with or wise in our choices or whatever the combination is.”

Nogueira is also confirmed to be writing the screenplay for a live-action Teen Titans movie, which wasn’t announced with the first phase of Gunn and Safran’s new DC Universe they unveiled back in 2023. Projects that were announced but have since stalled include the TV series Booster Gold, Paradise Lost, and Waller; and the features The Authority and Swamp Thing. (Booster Gold and Waller are “not quite where I want them to be yet,” Gunn said in December.)

Andy Muschietti (The Flash) is attached to direct the tentatively-titled The Brave and the Bold, which is being penned by an as-yet-unnamed writer and will focus on the DCU’s Batman (Bruce Wayne) and Robin (Damian Wayne). Most recently, Gunn revealed a new Wonder Woman movie is currently in the scripting stages, although a screenwriter wasn’t named.

“We won’t green light a film until we have a finished script we’re happy with and, in general, we won’t cast a film until the script is finished,” Gunn previously explained on Threads. “This is why some projects are moving faster than anticipated and others more slowly. It’s always gonna be quality first no matter what.”

It’s unclear whether the killed movie originated in the DC Studios writers’ room, which includes King, Drew Goddard (Marvel’s Daredevil), Jeremy Slater (Moon Knight), Christal Henry (HBO’s Watchmen), and Christina Hodson (Harley Quinn and the Birds of Prey).