Today, Co-Chairmen and Chief Executive Officers of DC Studios for Warner Bros. Discovery James Gunn and Peter Safran shared their future-state plans for the brand.

The reboot faced mixed responses, with some fans onboard for this new studio helmed strategy. Some criticism was relinquished from fans of the previously known DC Extended Universe (DCEU) dubbed “The Snyderverse” as well. Some even took to Twitter using #FireJamesGunn, citing his past online misconduct as reasoning.

Gunn also commented on Henry Cavill’s return of Superman in “Black Adam,” where the British actor reprised his role as the Man of Steel during an end credit scene involving Dwayne Johnson’s antihero and Viola Davis’ Amanda Waller.

“I didn’t fire Henry [Cavill]. He was never cast. He was in a cameo and that was the end of his story. I like Henry. He’s gotten dicked around by a lot of people including former regimes of this company. But [our] Superman isn’t Henry for a number of reasons.”

James Gunn

However, Safran and Gunn stated that they have left the door open for Gal Gadot (Wonder Woman), Jason Momoa (Aquaman), Ezra Miller (The Flash) and Zachary Levi (Shazam) to continue playing their respective DC superheroes.

The focus today was on the core, connected DC Universe and the initial shows and TV series that will help it take shape on the screen, according to a release from DC Comics. Familiar characters like Superman and Batman are obviously represented, but Gunn, Safran and the creative teams they’ve been working with are pulling from unexpected corners of the DC Universe as well.

“Here at DC, we have Metropolis, Gotham, Themyscira, Atlantis, Bialya… This is the world that we’re creating,” Gunn shared. “We’re coming into a world where superheroes exist and have existed for some time in one form or another, and that’s the universe. We are telling a big, huge central story that is like Marvel, except that I think we’re a lot more planned out than Marvel from the beginning because we’ve gotten a group of writers together to work the story out completely.”

When asked about “Superman & Lois,” Gunn and Safran stated that it’s a show “Everyone like,” and it has one or two seasons left under the hood.

While all ten of the below projects are in active development, some are further along than others and both Gunn and Safran emphasize that things may shift around.

“What we’re starting with today is the first part of the first chapter of our universe,” reveals Safran. “That first chapter’s called ‘Gods and Monsters.’ Many of the following projects are already being worked on, but we’re remaining flexible and we’re going to adjust because we’re never going to put a project into production before the script is right. This is a general timeline, but there will be flexibility within it.”

DC projects currently in the works

Creature Commandos

Animated HBO Max series

“The first series that we’re doing, and I’ve already written the entire series, is Creature Commandos,'” Gunn said. “This is an animated TV series and this is art from the animation company that’s doing it. ‘Creature Commandos’ is based on the great team from DC.”

This seven-episode animated show, written by James Gunn, shows Amanda Waller creating a black-ops team out of monstrous prisoners.

“What we’re doing with the DCU is we’re having animation tied directly into live action,” Gunn continued. “Television, movies and games all intertwine within the same universe. We’re going to cast actors that are going to be able to play the characters in this, as well as in other things, some of which we’ve already cast. I’ve written all seven episodes of this show and it’s in production now.”

Waller

Live action HBO Max series

“Viola Davis is coming back as her character, Amanda Waller,” said Gunn. “This is also going to have some of the ‘Peacemaker’ team in it as regulars on the show. This basically follows up ‘Peacemaker.’ We have two great creatives working on it: Christal Henry, who was a writer on ‘Watchmen,’ and Jeremy Carver who created ‘Doom Patrol.’ They have this incredibly marvelous story worked out that I think is really fantastic.”

Starring Davis, this series features Team Peacemaker and will be written by Christal Henry (“WATCHMEN”) and Jeremy Carver (“Supernatural”).

“This series will sit between ‘Peacemaker’ season one and season two,” Safran said.

The new ‘interconnected’ DCU

• Superman: Legacy (2025)

  Live action movie

  

  “(This) is really the launch of the DCU. The first two projects are an amuse-bouche for what’s coming up with “Superman: Legacy,'” said Safran. “James is currently writing it. We’re hoping that he will direct it. It’s not an origin story. It focuses on Superman balancing his Kryptonian heritage with his human upbringing. Superman represents truth, justice and the American way. He is kindness in a world that thinks of kindness as old fashioned.”

  Written by James Gunn, the film will hit theaters on July 11, 2025 and focus on Superman balancing his Kryptonian heritage with his human upbringing

  “With our stories, we want to take it away from good guy vs. bad guy,” Gunn said. “There are really good — almost saintly — people and Superman is among them. There are really terrible villains like Gorilla Grodd or the Joker. And then there’s everybody in between them, so there are all these shades of gray which allow us to tell complex stories.”

• Lanterns

  Live action HBO Max series

  

  “Our next project is another television series,” Safran said. “We call it ‘Lanterns’ and it is starring two of our favorite Green Lanterns — Hal Jordan and John Stewart. It’s going to be with HBO Max, as all of our series are that we’re going to talk about today.”

  “Lanterns” reportedly is more of a “True Detective”-type mystery with our two Lanterns. A terrestrial-based mystery.

  “That leads into the overall story that we’re telling throughout the different movies and television shows,” Gunn interjected. “We find this ancient horror on Earth, and these guys are basically supercops on ‘Precinct Earth.'”

  Safran said that the story is going to weave back and forth between the films and the television shows. 

  “‘Peacemaker’ is a good example of how that works, and that’s what we’re going to do with this big overarching story that we’re telling,” Safran said.

• The Authority

  Live Action Movie

  

  “This is one of my real passion projects. I’ve been working really hard on it with the writers and we’re starting to put together the entire story,” said Gunn. “This is a big movie. I don’t know how many of you are familiar with the Authority. They’re WildStorm characters. WildStorm was a comics imprint that was bought by DC that I really love. We’re moving a lot of these WildStorm characters into the DCU.”

  DC’s WildStorm characters will join the DC Universe as members of The Authority take matters into their own hands to do what they believe is right

  “‘The Authority’s’ a very different kind of superhero story,” Gunn continued. “They are basically good-intentioned, but they think that the world is completely broken and the only way to fix it is to take things into their own hands, whether that means killing people, destroying heads of state, changing governments — basically, whatever they want to do to make the world better. We’ll see how that journey goes for them. There are morally gray characters (in our DCU), of which these are.”

• Paradise Lost

  Live action HBO Max series

  

  “This is a ‘Game of Thrones’-type story about Themyscira/Paradise Island, home of the Amazons and the birthplace of Wonder Woman,” said Safran. “This involves all of the darkness, drama and political intrigue behind this society of only women. The events really take place before Diana’s birth.”

  Set in Themyscira, home of the Amazons and birthplace of Wonder Woman, this TV drama focuses on the genesis and political intrigue of an island of all women.

  “It’s an origin story of how this society of women came about. What does it mean,” Gunn questioned. “What are their politics like? What are their rules? Who’s in charge? What are the games that they play with each other to get to the top? I think it’s really exciting.”

• The Brave and the Bold

  Live action movie

  

  “This is the introduction of the DCU’s Batman,” Gunn said. “It is not Robert Pattinson. It is not Ben Affleck. We’re working with Robert on ‘The Batman – Part II’ with Matt Reeves, and we’re working with Ben Affleck, who has been a part of our team trying to bring things together and he really wants to direct one of our projects. We’re excited for him to do that.”

  The DCU will introduce its Batman and Robin in this unusual father-son story, inspired by Grant Morrison’s comics.

  “This is going to feature other members of the extended Bat-Family,” Safran said. “Just because we feel like they’ve been left out of the Batman stories in the theater for far too long.”

• Booster Gold

  Live action HBO Max series

  

  “A total fan favorite, as you know,” Safran said. “A loser from the future who uses his basic future technology to come back to today to pretend to be a superhero.”

  In this live-action series, Booster Gold uses basic technology from the future to pretend to be a superhero in the present day.

  “I think of it as basically the story of a superhero’s imposter syndrome,” Gunn said. “How do you deal with that? (It’s about) how he tries to use this future technology to be loved by the people of today and what is really at the base of that. It’s a character story that’s going to be a very different type of show, and we’re talking to an actor about it now.”

• Supergirl: The Woman of Tomorrow

  Live action movie

  

  “This is based on Tom King (and Bilquis Evely)’s wonderful comic,” Gunn said. “Tom has been one of the architects of this entire situation. He’s been one of the guys in the room with us, along with four or five other writers. I love his take on these characters. He just turns them slightly to be something very unique.”

  This science fiction adventure will be based on Tom King and Bilquis Evely’s amazing, award-winning recent comics stories and present a Supergirl that viewers are not used to seeing

  “In our story, we have Superman who was sent to Earth and raised by incredibly loving parents. Kara was on Krypton,” Gunn continued. “She was on a piece of Krypton that drifted away from the planet and she lived there for the first fourteen years of her life in a horrible situation where she watched everyone around her die. So, she’s a much harsher and more f*cked up Supergirl than you’ve been used to thus far.”

• Swamp Thing

  Live action movie

  

  “The final film we wanted to talk about is ‘Swamp Thing,'” Safran stated. “We bring it up because it’s important to point out that in these stories, although they’re interconnected, they’re not all tonally the same. Each set of filmmakers bring their own aesthetic to these films, and the fun is seeing how these tonally different works mash up in the future.”

  This is a film that will investigate the dark origins of Swamp Thing.

“We are actually developing a few other things as well, but for one reason or another, we can’t say them,” Gunn interjected. “This is the first batch of stuff, but there may be a couple of surprises to come.”