DC Studios co-CEO James Gunn’s latest announcement about a future reboot of DC superheroes in a new shared cinematic universe generated fan and media reactions ranging from confusion to anger this week, despite the fairly straightforward nature of his remarks. Where questions still remain, Gunn made it clear — that’s by design.
First image released for the DCU series “Creature Commandos”
The gist of Gunn’s comments is this: the upcoming DCU is a new universe, nothing in previous films or shows is canon, the new DCU launching in 2024 will still include some familiar faces, the films will focus on their own stories and characters rather than setting up larger shared-world elements and team-ups, and it’s too new for longterm details to exist yet.
There’s never not some ongoing controversy or fan outrage about something in DC cinema, and lately any decision or announcement made by DC Studios co-CEO James Gunn seems to generate instant hashtags proclaiming opposition — if he noted the sky is blue, there would soon be an army of truthers insisting Gunn changed the color of the sky from green. So it’s mostly silly and can be ignored. But the degree of confusion and anger greeting Gunn’s comments, and how it’s being spun into broader claims, should be addressed.
Gunn simply confirmed what most anyone who’s been paying attention had already figured out long ago.
To get into the specifics, the DCU will reboot their on-screen superheroes mostly with new actors in brand new versions of characters, but some of the actors from past films will return to play a few of these new and different versions of the same characters. Why? Because those characters play a role in upcoming DCU plans anyway, and those actors’ previous versions of those characters looks and feels how Gunn wants them to look and feel anyway. So, same actors in same roles sometimes, but still different versions of characters.
Other characters will be recast for their new incarnations. It’s all in a new world that will take clearer form as it progresses, starting in 2024 with Creature Commandos and 2025 with Superman: Legacy.
Now, taking it a step further, Gunn also noted that some of the characters might even have backstories that include some of the same events we saw the characters experience in some past films. However, even if a character references a past event they experienced in a previous DC superhero movie (such as one of the DCEU movies events, for example), that specific film isn’t canonical for the DCU. It just means that in this new version of a DC cinematic universe, those same characters exist and have some of the same or similar backstories.
For comic fans, none of this should even feel new, because it happens in comics all of the time with characters.
It’s the cinematic equivalent of the same artist drawing a comic book character after there’s been another company-wide retcon — it might be a different version of the character, but it looks like exactly the same person doing things the same way.
I get the concept as transferring the concept from comics to screen, similar to the way there’s no “backstory” yet for the DCU because the DCU hasn’t started or been built yet, the same way we didn’t know the precise details of every encounter and villain after a company-wide comics reset.
Which stories remain generally understood as the general “way things are” and what’s been erased entirely? Well, sometimes you have to wait to see whether something remains as it was previously established, or if we’ll get some new version of those events or characters introduced. They may or may not look the same, and may or may not retain whatever elements are useful to carry forward. If it works and doesn’t require the audience to do homework before or after the movie, it might be fair game. We’ll see, once it exists.
Yes, this means there will be a lot that’s unanswered, because answers literally won’t exist unless and until it’s addressed on screen. But nothing in DC entertainment so far is canonical, and the DCU will start building its canon with Creature Commandos and Superman: Legacy.
I feel like Gunn’s watched the multiverse concept play out in TV and cinema, and is making a strong guess as to where the concept is ending up, and he’s figuring out how to put the DCU on that path from the outset. Hit the ground running to build a new universe using whatever the best choices are, be it something new or retaining something from before but using it in a new way.
This is a reboot, we can now say, even if at some point the new DCU decides to pull something out of the past and introduce it into whatever new foundation has been laid. The universe of DC cinema will be rebooted and replaced by a new universe where some pieces might resemble pieces of the old universe, and in this new universe some of the same events might have happened to some characters as happened in some previous films’ universe, even though that previous film is not officially part of the new DCU’s canon.
This allows Gunn to rely on whatever previous films’ or streaming/TV shows’ events or individual plots or characters he might want or need to rely on, but only as a generally understood concept. “This isn’t the same character from that old movie, but those same events can generally be assumed to have happened to this version of the character, too.”
That theoretically allows viewers to sort of pick and choose mentally which films and events to carry over in the back of their minds, if and when necessary or helpful, as the new DCU plays out. Or take it at face value within its own context and don’t worry about the past, which Gunn also says the new DCU will use as a sort of guiding principle — that the films can stand alone on their own merits, without need to make sure you’ve seen a collection of other films first.
Which isn’t to say a film can’t reward those who have seen all of the films and therefore might recognize certain references and put together some bigger pieces that build within the larger world of stories, for example. But films won’t serve this purposes as pieces of some jigsaw puzzle that’s being assembled, which could falling prey to reducing movies to pieces of a story rather than their own story — even when they tie to other stories, or are stories that serve as part of a larger story.
This will allow the DCU to continue using characters like Amanda Waller, for example, still portrayed by Viola Davis, and the character might act in ways that reflect or reference or perpetuate some particular previous story or plot point or character arc we witnessed in a prior DCEU movie. That doesn’t make the prior movie canonical for the DCU, it just means the character’s backstory in this new universe mirrors that particular aspect of the characters’ backstory in the old DCEU.
Since they are still building the DCU, and since building it without forcing the films to meet criteria and boundaries representing the larger universe or setting up any other particular stories or team-ups, that means the specifics and “plans” for the DCU, and since the first DCU projects won’t debut for another year or two, that means it’s impossible to offer the sort of details that the media and fans perpetually demand and expect.
This is a fact made worse precisely because it was the nature of studios over the past decade-plus to try to lay out sweeping plans and release dates for elaborate shared cinematic worlds and intricate plans to tie them all together with subplots and cameos and post-credit scenes. Studios fed the tendency of an impatient entertainment press and fandom to want everything as soon as possible, so backtracking from that will be tough — but worthwhile.
Marvel used a loose approach to planning in early days, making it possible to quickly pivot to take advantage of opportunities or to dodge roadblocks and overcome stumbles. So the inclusion of world-building didn’t detract so much from their films, and by the time the studio was releasing two-parters and tie-ins the audience existed to go along with it. Meanwhile, the films were typically good enough and self-explanatory enough that even a novice could get quickly caught up in a film’s first act and roll with it.
So Gunn seems to feel DC will be better served by avoiding trying to jump into world-building in the same way, particularly this late in the “shared cinematic world” trend, and after prior efforts to plan out a DC world or to course-correct with new plans for a DC world came to naught. I think in practice, we’ll still wind up seeing enough Easter eggs and tie-in elements to make the distinction more mild than it sounds at first glance — it’s more about the idea of letting filmmakers tell their stories and not treat each project as “world-building” or just a piece of something else.
In short, I believe he’s putting up parameters to prevent what happened at Warner last time, when studio executives increasingly micromanaged and forced DC projects to serve all manner of purposes and motives other than telling stories on their own merits. DC never quite got past those problems, even in the best of their films the taint or damage was always subtextual and its presence felt.
Gunn is the right person for this stage of DC’s evolution and remaking. He’s handling it well with his willingness to engage publicly, to pointedly officially deny rumors or confirm certain things, and to try to clarify that no, we cannot and should not expect to know everything that’s coming, and we cannot and should not expect the studio to have such plans at this stage of building a complicated mythology for DC cinema.
While I’ve explained my opinion that the DCU would benefit from actually pushing back the debut of their first entries until after 2025, to let the baggage of the DCEU fade from audience memories a bit while The Batman franchise and its spinoffs (hopefully a Catwoman movie, please) team with the Joker sequel to hold the line for DC in TV and film for the next few years. But that’s due to my fears about how much the last several years of DCEU failure has harmed the DC brand (to the point even a film — The Flash — starring one of the most popular versions of Batman in film history still failed at the box office), not any specific concerns about Gunn’s and his co-CEO Peter Safran’s plans for DC movies and TV/streaming.
So far, Gunn has confirmed a few actors who will return in the DCU to portray the same characters they previously played in the DCEU — Xolo Maridueña (Blue Beetle), the aforementioned Viola Davis (Amanda Waller), John Cena (Peacemaker), Freddie Stroma (Vigilante), Steve Agee (John Economous), and Jennifer Holland (Emilia Harcourt).
New live-action casting announced so far includes David Corenswet as Superman, Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane, and Nathan Fillion as Guy Gardener aka Green Lantern. Casting for animation includes Anthony Carrigan as Metamorpho, Frank Grillo as Rick Flag (Sr.), Indira Varma as the Bride of Frankenstein, Sean Gunn as both Weasel and G.I. Robot, David Harbour as Eric Frankenstein, Zoe Chao as Nina Mazursky, Alan Tudyk as Doctor Phosphorus, and Maria Bakalova as Princess Ilana Rostovic.
Additionally, Jason Momoa appears on board some future DCU project. Whether that’s as Aquaman or perhaps Lobo — maybe both, or maybe some other character entirely — remains to be seen. But I think he’s showing up. I also personally suspect Nicholas Hoult will wind up in the DCU, and right now I think he might be a candidate to play the shared-world Batman in The Brave and the Bold.
I suspect we’ll hear more Superman: Legacy casting soon, as well as more plans for the DCU as they develop — the for the latter, don’t expect too much, based on Gunn’s comments. One of the many benefits of his new approach is, if the plans are evolving and there’s nothing to know, then there’s nothing to leak either.