DC Shocker: James Gunn, Peter Safran to Lead Film, TV and Animation Division

[Autbot_Benz]

The hierarchy of power in the DC universe really is changing.

In a stunning turn of events, filmmaker James Gunn and producer Peter Safran have been tapped to lead DC’s film, TV and animation efforts as co-chairs and co-CEOs of DC Studios, a newly formed division at Warner Bros. that will replace DC Films.

The unprecedented move, in which a top director will assume a top executive post, marks the end of a months-long search by Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav to replace DC Films boss Walter Hamada, who departed the studio last week. That search had all of Hollywood guessing and playing executive bingo for who will get one of the most coveted — and challenging — jobs in town.



In recent weeks, Gunn and Safran were spotted on the Warners lot, meeting with Warners film co-chair Michael De Luca about future projects. And according to sources, the initial overture to Safran and Gunn came from De Luca over the summer, even as the studio was in shaky talks with Dan Lin to take the job.

Gunn will focus on the creative side, while Safran will focus on the business and production side of things. Both are expected to continue to direct and produce projects, respectively. They will report directly to Zaslav, and work closely with Warners film bosses De Luca and Pamela Abdy. Sources say the deal runs four years and Gunn will be exclusive to DC. The goal is for them not just to be producers, but to truly function as execuctives even as Gunn will occasionally hone a movie.

Unlike Marvel Studios, DC has multiple films set in separate creative universes, and according to sources, Joker filmmaker Todd Phillips’ work on the upcoming sequel, which goes into production later this year, will not fall under Gunn and Safran’s purview and instead will be overseen by De Luca and Abdy. Matt Reeves, who worked under Hamada, has a budding universe based on The Batman movie. It is unclear under whose purview Reeves’ future projects would fall, but everything else moving forward would be under Gunn and Safran.

“DC has among the most entertaining, powerful, and iconic characters in the world and I am thrilled to have the singular and complementary talents of James and Peter joining our world-class team and overseeing the creative direction of the storied DC Universe,” said Zaslav in a statement. “Their decades of experience in filmmaking, close ties to the creative community, and proven track record thrilling superhero fans around the globe make them uniquely qualified to develop a long-term strategy across film, TV, and animation, and take this iconic franchise to the next level of creative storytelling.”

Gunn is one of the more respected minds in the world of comic book filmmaking. He came up in the indie film space, and became an A-list filmmaker in 2014 with Marvel Studios’ Guardians of the Galaxy and its 2017 sequel. He jumped to DC in 2018 to develop The Suicide Squad after rival Marvel fired him as director of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. (The studio later reinstated him, and that project is due out in May 2023.) His DC foray The Suicide Squad was critically adored, and spawned the hit HBO Max spinoff Peacemaker, starring John Cena. Gunn is currently working on a second season.

Safran came up as a manager, where Gunn was among his clients, and is fully enmeshed in the world of DC as producer of the $1 billion grossing Aquaman and its upcoming sequel, as well as Squad, Peacemaker and Shazam! and it’s sequel. His relationship with Warners extends back ten years and includes the $2 billion Conjuring horror franchise. The Safran Company recently re-upped its production deal with Warners.

Gunn and Safran will work with top execs at WBD, including TV boss Channing Dungey; HBO and HBO Max’s Casey Bloys; US Networks Group chair and chief content officer Kathleen Finch; consumer products chief Pam Lifford; and Warner Interactive Entertainment’s David Haddad. DC Studios will share resources across the company.

“We’re honored to be the stewards of these DC characters we’ve loved since we were children,” Gunn and Safran said in a statement. “We look forward to collaborating with the most talented writers, directors, and actors in the world to create an integrated, multilayered universe that still allows for the individual expression of the artists involved. Our commitment to Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Harley Quinn, and the rest of the DC stable of characters is only equaled by our commitment to the wonder of human possibility these characters represent. We’re excited to invigorate the theatrical experience around the world as we tell some of the biggest, most beautiful, and grandest stories ever told.”

The move comes at a seismic moment for the DC, which for the past four years has been led by Hamada under the DC Films banner. The executive departed amid friction with new Warners leadership under Zaslav, who made the controversial decision to axe Batgirl in August and has vowed to reshape DC with a ten-year plan as it seeks to compete with rival Marvel Studios. Even though Zaslav talked about finding a Kevin Feige-style executive, over the summer the team started exploring looking at emulating the Pixar model, in which you have producers and filmmakers working as executives. That has never been tried in the live-action space.

DC released Black Adam over the weekend, which featured Superman actor Henry Cavill’s return to the DC universe, and next up has Shazam! Fury of the Gods out in March.

As for Gunn’s future at Marvel, there has been talk that he could continue on in some form after the conclusion of his Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy. However, today’s news, which comes hours after Marvel touted its upcoming Gunn-directed Guardians holiday special, seems to have closed the door on Gunn’s chapter in the MCU.

The hiring is effective Nov. 1, and comes as De Luca and Abdy have been making creative decisions and overseeing post-production on everything from The Flash to Aquaman and The Lost Kingdom, since taking over their posts in early July.

“We could not be more excited to have James Gunn and Peter Safran join the team and assume the leadership of the DC Universe,” De Luca and Abdy said in a statement. “James is a brilliant filmmaker and storyteller and Peter is a tremendously successful and prolific producer and to have them both committing to work together to forge this new era for DC is a literal dream come true. We all share a very similar sensibility and passion for this universe and the stars couldn’t have aligned any better. We can’t wait to get started, dig in, and collaborate with these unmatched creative minds.”

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/mo...0f0740c6f56c40

[oldmanwinters]

Well, good luck to 'em...

15 years ago, I would have thought an annual stream of DTV animated DC movies headed by Bruce Timm would have been the best thing ever, but just about all of them struck me as underwhelming or downright offensive.

Not sure Gunn is the guy to right the ship, but I guess somebody has to get paid to try.

[Andrew NDB]

Is James Gunn even into any DC properties that aren't weird and obscure? He's a savvy guy but I'm not sure his tastes are overall what the DCEU needs.

[TigerClaw]

James Gunn is gonna be the Kevin Feige of the DCEU, This is huge news.

[AquaParade]

I don’t particularly enjoy Gunn’s films but he seems like a good choice. He “gets it” in terms of comic book characters and he isn’t afraid to take risks.

[Leo656]

I don't like his style. Way too goofy.

I mean this is just Whedon all over again, to me. "Get the Marvel guy everyone likes, he'll fix it... right?" Like, it proves my point, it doesn't matter who the "new regime" is, the only thing WB knows how to do is play copycat to try and "catch up", and they think taking shortcuts like "Just hire the guys Marvel used" is the right way to do that, instead of establishing an identity of their own and sticking with it. We've already seen with Whedon, even if a creative has had success as "The Marvel Guy", that doesn't mean anything at all on the DC side of things if said creatives have no passion for the project. And like Andrew, I question Gunn's passion for anything DC that isn't "weird", "obscure", or flat-out goofy. I am not convinced at all that this is "good news".

All I see is that from now on everything is gonna be "Shazam!" with more dick jokes and needle drops... and I absolutely do not want that.

Ah well, it was nice to be excited for a day or two. Good to know I can go right back to not giving a sh*t about comic book movies.

[AquaParade]

I don’t like Gunn’s goofy style either, but he won’t be directing all these films. He seems smart enough to understand that different films require different tones.

It’s not like we need our favorite director for this job. We need someone smart, who understands filmmaking, has industry connections, and isn’t corrupt.

Like, Gunn isn’t competing to be best director here. He’s competing to be a better producer than the guys who shoved Justice League 2017 into theaters so they could get a bonus.

People like James Gunn. They want to work with him. Filmmakers will trust him more than they’ll trust producers who have never directed anything, etc.
At least in theory.

[Leo656]

I hear you, and we'll see.

This is just coming from a guy with a wrestling perspective, where whoever Top Guy running the company is, that's the vision that comes onto your screen. Even if the other producers, directors, agents, what have you, all have totally different creative vision or even can't stand what they're being asked to produce, they have to do what the guy upstairs says.

I've not seen too much proof that movie studios operate any differently, and in fact from what I have seen it's more or less the same, only mitigated somewhat. So it's simply my concern that Gunn's own personal tastes will trickle down and affect everything regardless what the other people think.

I mean let's be honest, guy dressed up as a pedophile priest, once, and spent years dealing with the fallout of that bad choice. Can we REALLY say this guy is all that savvy? I don't think we can.

We'll see.

[ZariusTwo]

Not happy. Gunn's movies are awful, and yes, Guardians are just as bad

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by ZariusTwo

Not happy. Gunn's movies are awful, and yes, Guardians are just as bad

To be FAIR, though. Have you ever watched a Kevin Feige movie? You haven't, because it's a trick question. He's a behind the scenes guy, making sure the right people shake hands and make a quality thing.

It's possible Gunn can be that guy for DC/WB. Maybe.

[Leo656]

I mean... I'm one of the ten people who saw "Brightburn" and I liked it a lot, but I don't know how much he personally had to do with that one.

[Leo656]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

To be FAIR, though. Have you ever watched a Kevin Feige movie? You haven't, because it's a trick question. He's a behind the scenes guy, making sure the right people shake hands and make a quality thing.

And Michael Bay was "just a producer" on the Ninja Turtles movies, and therefore nobody had any way of knowing well in advance they'd be terrible, right? That was purely circumstantial? He was totally hands-off and they were just total garbage by complete accident, it had nothing to do with him?

I mean, no, not EVERY "behind-the-scenes guy" exerts that level of "influence"; I'm just saying, Devil's Advocate, it can happen, it has happened, and if Gunn decides to be that kind of "behind-the-scenes guy" it can easily go bad.

Like, my gut instinct is usually correct, and my gut instinct is really screaming "Like 'Shazam!' with more dick jokes and needle drops" is what the "new DCEU" is gonna be. I really, really wanna be wrong, though.

[Andrew NDB]

Guys like Bay and, I hate to say it, Snyder, don't strike me as super intelligent guys. They know their CRAFT. But basically things boil down to excellently shot explosions and action pieces. Possibly some cocaine.

Gunn seems like an intelligent guy in and of himself. I'm not super caring about edgy Twitter posts from way back the left told us we are supposed to care about until they forgot about it. Perhaps he can kind of move and shape things, hopefully knowing when to step back after putting the right people in charge of this thing or that thing.

Also, jeeze. He's DC Kevin Feige with two projects as yet unreleased at Marvel proper. Like, there will probably be promo stuff for the first Gunn-produced DC stuff even while we are watching Guardians 3. Very interesting stuff. No one is saying anything but I think his letting back in to direct Guardians 3 and this holiday special may have come with some weirdness. As in, "come back! We welcome you with open arms! Except... "

[Leo656]

I don't think "pedophile" should ever be a Halloween costume and I think it goes beyond "edgy", and I think it proves that guy is pretty far from "intelligent". If nothing else, it proves what I've been saying and his movies generally reinforce: The guy has a terrible sense of humor.

But I mean yeah we can just shrug at the fact the guy thinks "child molester" is right there on the Halloween rack next to "Sexy Indian Princess" and that the two are equally "cheeky". *I* don't shrug at it, but I mean, it's a path some may pursue.

Here's a dare: Go out this weekend with a Barbie doll sitting on your thumb and a sign that says "I'm Roman Polanski" around your neck. See how that works out. I don't think you're gonna get a ton of FB Likes or Reese's cups, but I mean, maybe a couple.

[Turo602]

Originally Posted by Leo656

If nothing else, it proves what I've been saying and his movies generally reinforce: The guy has a terrible sense of humor.

Surprised you'd say that considering how much you seem to enjoy Lollipop Chainsaw.

[Leo656]

The sun even shines on a dog's ass some days, my friend.

[drgon78]

I like Guardians of The Galaxy and Lollipop Chainsaw....with that being said I don't know if he would be the best choice but there are plenty of worse ones.... so only time will tell.

[Leo656]

Social media certainly seems overjoyed.

I guess I shouldn't be shocked that a bunch of people who never leave the house would be thrilled that the guy who gave us John Cena's infamous "Sucking all these dicks for Peace" monologue is running the DCEU ship, now.

[Andrew NDB]

Just pie in the sky, of course, but one thing being overlooked in this -- and it sounds ridiculous to even type until the WB/DC movies start getting their crap together into some kind of cohesive anything -- is that it is highly likely Feige and Gunn would have absolutely no problem brokering some kind of DC/Marvel crossover extravaganza sometime down the road. We could actually get DC vs. Marvel on the big screen, in some manner.

[Turo602]

Yeah, how amazing would that be? The Justice League vs an all female Avengers.