This looks like a job for James Gunn. Superman marked the official start of the new DC Universe being built by Gunn and Peter Safran, the co-heads of DC Studios, who were hired by Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav to “reimagine and unify the creative direction of DC under one leadership team.” Following the film’s $217 million opening at the global box office — DC’s biggest since Matt Reeves’ The Batman in 2022 — Zaslav remarked that Gunn’s Superman is “just the first step” in getting the new DCU up, up and away.
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“This weekend, we watched Superman soar as James Gunn’s passion and vision came to life on the big screen. Superman is just the first step,” Zaslav said in a statement over the weekend. “Over the next year alone, DC Studios will introduce the films Supergirl and Clayface in theaters and the series Lanterns on HBO Max, all part of a bold ten-year plan. The DC vision is clear, the momentum is real, and I couldn’t be more excited for what’s ahead.”
Jeff Goldstein, President of Global Distribution at Warner Bros. Pictures, added separately, “What we always hoped to achieve with Superman was winning back the trust of our DC fans and indeed, they have enthusiastically embraced our first entry in an exciting new theatrical universe.”
DC’s second attempt at a Marvel-rivaling interconnected cinematic universe comes after the DC Extended Universe, launched with the Zack Snyder-directed Man of Steel in 2013, managed just one billion dollar film in 2018’s Aquaman before ending with a string of box office failures. The R-rated Joker, set outside the DCEU canon, grossed a billion back in 2019, but in the six years since, only the $772 million-grossing The Batman — also set in its own standalone continuity — delivered DC a bonafide box office hit.
2022’s Black Adam, fronted by Dwayne Johnson, took in $393 million worldwide, while Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom cruised to $440 million globally with the star power of Jason Momoa in 2023. That same year, the lifetime grosses of Blue Beetle and Shazam! Fury of the Gods failed to cross $200 million worldwide, and The Flash crawled to $271 million.
“I don’t really think there was ever superhero fatigue, but I do think there was sort of a superhero gold rush for a minute,” Gunn told NPR in an interview pegged to Superman. “So I think there was a moment when anything with a superhero in it was making money. Visual effects allowed these movies to really shine and attract people’s attention. And then after a while, people got sick [of them]. ‘There has to be something else here for me to see this movie. There has to be something outside of it just being another superhero movie.’”
“A lot of bad movies came out,” Gunn continued, adding that “people need a reason to go to the movies.”
Warner Bros., which distributed DC Studios’ Superman, has given audiences reason to go to the movies: since April, the studio has had box office hits in A Minecraft Movie, Sinners, Final Destination Bloodlines, and F1: The Movie. “These past few months, it’s been pretty good,” Gunn said of the industry. “People are going back to the movies. There were too many crappy movies, that’s all it is.”
Gunn explained that the movie industry has become “an absolute mess,” noting that, in general, “people are going to see big spectacle films. That’s all they’re going to see.”
“Maybe a horror movie, that’s it. Other than that, it’s going to be really hard to go and make those medium-sized movies that people go see,” the Guardians of the Galaxy and The Suicide Squad filmmaker added. “They happen, but they’re anomalies. People stay home to watch that stuff. But they do love going to be a big spectacle movie, if it works. But we live in an industry now where IP drives the movies, and what happens is, release dates drive the creative process.”
According to Gunn, most studios are greenlighting movies without finished scripts to meet release dates. “80% of the time a big movie is being made, they’re finishing the scripts while the movie is being shot,” he said. “And it’s terrible, because the movies are bad. It has to be script-based.”
Gunn has repeatedly said that DC Studios won’t begin production on any project without a finished script or teleplay. With the exodus of screenwriters from film to creator-driven TV, DC Studios is “trying to elevate the writer.”
“The writer is important. The writer needs to get paid the appropriate amount, the writer needs to be a part of the process as we choose actors and look at everything. The writer is important,” Gunn said. “They’ve just been diminished so much over the past 20 years, and it’s horrifying. And that’s the reason why movies are bad.”
He also echoed previous comments about the state of the DC brand before Warner Bros. Discovery formed DC Studios, saying, “I felt like the DC characters were just sort of sold off to anyone that wanted to take them, and there was nobody really minding the mint.”
“The main thing we wanted to bring [to DC] was a sort of consistency” but “not in terms of tone,” Gunn said. “All of our DC Studios projects are very different from each other.”
Gunn’s Silver Age-inspired Superman movie will be followed by the sophomore season of Gunn’s hit HBO Max series Peacemaker, which is tonally different — and rated TV-MA, but also existing in the same world as the PG-13 Superman. Also on deck from DC Studios is next summer’s Supergirl movie, starring Milly Alcock as Kara Zor-El, Kryptonian cousin of David Corenswet’s Man of Steel, and the smaller-budgeted body horror Clayface, written by horror maestro Mike Flanagan, for late 2026. And HBO’s Lanterns, which is likened to True Detective, is expected to premiere on the network next year.
“We have Superman, then we have Peacemaker season 2, a pretty gritty, grounded, R-rated show,” Gunn said. “Then we have Lanterns, which is a very grounded HBO show, then we have Supergirl, which is a space fantasy, then we have Clayface, which is an all-out, R-rated horror movie. I want those things to be different.”
DC Studios’ Superman is now playing in theaters. Peacemaker season 2 premieres Aug. 21 on HBO Max, and will be followed by HBO’s Lanterns (TBA early 2026) and theatrical releases Supergirl (June 26, 2026) and Clayface (Sept. 11, 2026).
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