DC Wanted James Gunn To Be Its Kevin Feige, Then Fired Him Before He Could Get To His ‘Avengers’

James Gunn and Peter Safran’s tenure running DC Studios ended with three theatrical releases: Superman, Supergirl, and Clayface. Their fourth, Man of Tomorrow, is still awaiting release.

Following Skydance’s decision to replace them with former Marvel executive Jeremy Latcham, the argument over their handling of DC has largely become a referendum on a cinematic universe that had barely begun reaching theaters.

I don’t think their tenure was perfect. Superman was promising, Supergirl was a mess, and Clayface was fun. There were legitimate reasons to question individual decisions and whether their approach would deliver the returns a studio expects from these characters.

But acknowledging those problems doesn’t require pretending Gunn was deliberately ignoring DC’s most recognizable superheroes because he would rather make movies about C-tier misfits.

James Gunn’s DC universe was three movies into a project that required years

Gunn’s affection for obscure characters is well established. He turned the Guardians of the Galaxy into household names and delivered what I consider the MCU’s best trilogy — a substantial part of why he got the DC job in the first place.

That doesn’t mean every less familiar character he used represented a refusal to work with Batman or Wonder Woman. He launched the theatrical universe with Superman. Its second movie was Supergirl. Whatever you think of those films, this was hardly a slate built exclusively around characters audiences had never heard of.

The original announced plans also included a Batman movie and a series set on Wonder Woman’s home island of Themyscira. You can criticize the pace of those projects without claiming the characters were being intentionally excluded.

The comic book movie landscape is far different from what it was a decade ago. Audiences have spent years asking these films to move beyond the same formulas. Whatever you think of Clayface, an R-rated body-horror movie was an attempt to do exactly that.

 Man of Tomorrow, the franchise’s fourth in-universe movie, was already expected to introduce Adria Arjona’s Wonder Woman — a casting that has become one of Hollywood’s worst-kept secrets. The idea that Gunn was refusing to use DC’s biggest characters doesn’t hold up.

Look at Marvel’s first four films, in release order: Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2 and Thor. There was promise there, especially in Iron Man. There were also uneven movies, creative changes, and plenty of uncertainty about whether the larger experiment would work. Sound familiar?

The MCU we now remember as an inevitable Hollywood juggernaut did not look inevitable after Thor. Its first four releases were not an uninterrupted run of masterpieces. Marvel was still establishing characters, working out its formula and asking audiences to trust that these separate stories would eventually connect.

Captain America: The First Avenger was film five. The Avengers was film six. DC removed Gunn and Safran from their executive roles before their fourth movie reached theaters.

Building a cinematic universe requires more patience than hiring a studio boss

Gunn and Safran had four years in the job. That sounds like a reasonable stretch until you account for how long these films take to develop and produce, while also building a television slate for a streaming service—a demand Feige didn’t face when the MCU began. Gunn’s detractors point to a Gorilla Grodd comedy arriving before a Batman movie as evidence of misplaced priorities. But a streaming series and a Batman blockbuster have different production schedules and serve different needs. Their release order alone doesn’t tell you which character the studio considers more important.

Four years as an executive does not mean four years of finished movies arriving in theaters. Much of that time was spent building the operation that would produce them. Reports indicate that the DCU’s Batman would’ve been introduced in 2028’s The Brave and the Bold; a plan that would’ve seen DC’s iconic trinity unveiled over the course of three years (beginning with Superman in 2025)

This is the contradiction in asking someone to become DC’s Kevin Feige and then judging the completed version of that assignment before the first wave of films has finished coming out.

Could Gunn have communicated a clearer public plan for Batman? Absolutely.

The absence of a new DCU Batman was an obvious source of frustration, particularly while Matt Reeves’ separate franchise remained in development. But The Batman: Part II was originally announced for October 3, 2025. Had it arrived on that schedule, the broader conversation about Batman’s presence at the studio might have looked different.

Reeves’ films are separate from Gunn’s continuity. That distinction matters. It also illustrates that Gunn was running a studio with existing commitments and overlapping versions of major characters, rather than assembling a franchise on an empty release calendar.

None of this excuses a bad movie. It does explain why the lack of an immediately completed Justice League lineup is a poor measure of whether the entire project was working.

Another leadership change brings another round of uncertainty for DC fans

My view is that Gunn’s DCU probably would have been fine. Not perfect for fans. Not the maximum possible return for investors. A functioning franchise with some good movies, some disappointments, and enough continuity to give audiences a reason to keep showing up.

Clayface was a useful example: it didn’t break box office records or become an Oscar frontrunner, but it turned a profit and offered something different in an increasingly repetitive genre. It was a double rather than a home run. A studio doesn’t need every release to clear the fences; a steady run of profitable movies that keep audiences interested can sustain a franchise, too.

My confidence in the franchise’s future is a judgment, not something three released films can prove. But the argument for replacing Gunn is also a bet on an outcome that hasn’t happened. Fans who invested in Superman are now wondering about Superman’s future. Projects that were supposed to establish the next stage of the universe are being discussed through the lens of whether they fit the new leadership’s preferences. That uncertainty has a cost.

The owners may believe they can improve on Gunn and Safran’s results. Perhaps they can. But marginally better results would hardly make another disruptive transition an obvious triumph, while another failed attempt to establish continuity would leave DC repeating the problems it was supposedly fixing.

I wasn’t convinced every part of Gunn’s plan would work. I was convinced it deserved enough time to become an actual body of work. Three movies were not enough. Now the billionaires squeezing every ounce of creative energy out of beloved IP are choosing to start over again, further stripping the characters of their sheen — a gambit that offers marginal gains in the best-case scenario and another DCEU-style implosion in the worst.