The DCEU is dead. Long live the DCU. One that will be helmed in part by James Gunn, who has made his name off numerous superhero properties on both the DC Comics and Marvel side of things. But the question was, “What would he do?” Would he do a full reboot? Or would he do something halfway? The answer has come in a press gathering documented by many, including ComicBook.com, and it was there that he revealed a massive slate of ten properties that would be coming over the next several years.
In terms of movies, there is Superman: Legacy, The Authority, The Brave and The Bold, Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, and Swamp Thing. Then there are five TV series in the works; Creature Commandos, Waller, Booster Gold, Lanterns, and Paradise Lost.
Gunn himself is writing the Superman feature and might direct it. Brave and the Bold will feature the entire Bat-Family but focus on Bruce and his son Damian. Lanterns is a redo on the long-gestating HBO Max series and will now focus on Hal Jordan and John Stewart. Paradise Lost will be about Themyscira before Wonder Woman was born. Creature Commandos is the sole animated series of the lot, but Gunn said the actors would portray the characters in live-action later on.
Gunn said previously that these are only the “first projects to be unveiled” so we’ll need to see if that holds. But one thing he did promise is that the first slate will be “Chapter 1” of a tale that’ll take years to tell and be titled “Gods and Monsters.” He also said in a chat with the press that this wasn’t going to be “Marvel 2.0”:
“A lot of people think it’s going to be Marvel 2.0, and definitely I learned a lot of stuff at Marvel. I think that we have a lot of differences,” Gunn explained. “We are telling a big, huge, central story that is like Marvel, except for, I think that we’re a lot more planned out than Marvel from the beginning because we’ve gotten a group of writers together to work that story out completely. But we’re also creating a universe that is like Star Wars, where there’s different times, different places, different things, or Game of Thrones, where characters are a little bit more morally complex.”
It should be noted that there are some properties from the DCEU that will carry over…mainly Peacemaker Season 2 is happening, and Waller will follow up on the first season of the show. So it’s going to be very interesting times for DC Comics fans. If you want to see Gunn talking about his slate, check it out below:
Here are just a few of our plans. Up, up, and away! #DCStudios #DCU @DCComics pic.twitter.com/8XNDNLUEPq
— James Gunn (@JamesGunn) January 31, 2023
