At a press event at the Warner Studio grounds on January 31, 2023 German time, the two DC Studios bosses James Gunn and Peter Safran not only announced a slew of new, cross-media superhero projects, including brand new projects about Superman, Batman and Green Lantern, but also about their philosophy with which they want to promote the construction of a new film universe – and what mistakes were made with the old DCEU.
The new bosses, in particular, found clear words for the previous DC management’s publishing policy, calling it “pretty messed up” and “crappy” (Gunn flatly describes it as “fucked up”): Financial failures, production problems, the division of the DC cosmos into completely independent movie and series universes (such as the DCEU and the Arrowverse).
No time to properly develop the films
The bad practice of the studios (here Gunn and Safran probably includes all major Hollywood studios) of publicly fixing theatrical release dates for blockbuster movies and sequels before the creative teams had even gotten together was heavily criticized:
“People feel [Veröffentlichungs-]Deadlines to get a movie to theaters, whether it fits or not. […] I’m a writer at heart and we won’t be making any movies until the script is done.” Gunn swore: “We’re not going to put hundreds of millions of dollars into a movie that’s only two-thirds scripted and we will have to finalize the script during filming.”
The pressure and chaos of not having the script ready when production is due to begin leads to quality loss, which is why “the quality of movies today is worse than it was 20-30 years ago”.
But James Gunn and Peter Safran are well aware of this problem and vowed to improve the handling of their own projects. You can also see this in the featured films and series of the new DC universe:
Of the 10 DCU titles, only one movie has a release date so far: “Superman: Legacy‘, which will hit theaters on July 11, 2025 – and in this case, Gunn himself is responsible for the screenplay. All other feature films and series reboots are still undated and will remain so until scripts are finalized.
The screenplays are the heart of the films
For James Gunn, the decline of screenwriting culture is one of the biggest problems of modern Hollywood: “The degradation of screenwriters in Hollywood is a terrible story. Things have gotten much worse since I moved here 23 years ago. Writers have been completely sidelined in favor of actors and directors, and it’s very important to us that the writer plays a bigger role and becomes more important in the film process.”
According to Gunn, the increasing fatigue of superheroes is also real and one reason for this is the poorly written scripts, some of which are still being completed during filming:
“They make those films for which no third act has yet been written. And then they start using them during [der Produktion] writing – developing the story while they are already filming. And then you just see a bunch of people hitting each otherand there’s not even a flow to the action.”
Diversification is the way to go
To avoid this problem, the two new DC studio bosses want to tell a wide variety of stories and don’t pass up the opportunity to do a pretty obvious dig at DC competitor Marvel:
“You can’t tell the same story over and over: ‘Hero, villain, giant thing in the sky, the good guys win.’ You have to tell stories that are more morally complex. You have to tell stories that not only pretend to be different genres, but are actually different genres.”
This desire for complex stories and different genres could also be reflected in a colorful roster of filmmakers* who can help shape the new DCU with their own unique style, genres and ideas. The new DCU is not the Gunnverse, Gunn emphasizes additionally.
James Gunn’s criticism is correct and justified
Whether the new DC bosses will fare better and whether the reboot will succeed remains to be seen. However, in the opinion of the author of this article, the criticism is absolutely justified and the approach to give the stories and writing processes more time sounds absolutely sensible.
The ability to easily incorporate different genres and styles into the new DC universe would also be desirable, as the formal processing of an always-the-same scheme has actually led to a certain (Marvel) superhero fatigue, at least for me.
First of all, however, the last offshoots of the “old” DCEU come to the cinemas with the four still excellent films “Shazam 2: Fury Of The Gods”, “The Flash”, “Blue Beetle” and “Aquaman 2″. “Shazam 2: Fury Of The Gods” opens in German cinemas on March 16, 2023.