Hopefully this is the one and only post-firing Gunn/DC article I'll have to write today, but a few things broke overnight.
There's a THR report detailing the behind-the-scenes drama that led to Gunn and Peter Safran getting the boot. According to THR, Skydance felt that "Superman," which grossed $618M worldwide and was semi-profitable, didn't net out or have the kind of pop culture impact a movie like that should have.
Gunn and Safran thought they were safe and were already plotting a third "Superman" movie, which Gunn had begun writing, when Ellison came knocking. "Man of Tomorrow" isn't even out yet, and they were already mapping out "Superman 3." That's how confident they were.
Now Puck's Matt Belloni is reporting that the demolition has already begun. He writes that plans are already afoot to dismantle much of what Gunn and Safran had plotted out beyond next summer's Gunn-directed "Man of Tomorrow" and the currently shooting "The Batman: Part II." So DC goes back into reboot mode… again.
Again. How many times is this now? Snyder's universe, the course-correction "Justice League," the half-hearted DCEU death rattle, Gunn's clean-slate "Gods and Monsters," and now whatever Marvel veteran Jeremy Latcham dreams up. He takes over on December 1 as president and chief creative officer.
I'll be honest: I was never fully sold on Gunn's "Superman." It was earnest and colorful, but also overstuffed. It felt more like a pilot episode for a universe than a movie that stood on its own. A $618M haul isn't a disaster, but it's not a phenomenon either. The film's budget was reportedly around $225M, although many believe the costs were purposely lowballed by Warner Bros. Gunn famously pushed back on the idea that it would be a flop if it missed $700M.
"Supergirl" is a different story. The new regime saw it as a disaster, and there's really no spinning that one — Its losses hit the $200M mark. Meanwhile, "Clayface," which opened October 21, has passed $100M worldwide on a reported $44M budget. Not bad, but not quite the cultural impact Ellison is striving for.
It's quite obvious that Ellison is chasing the kind of impact that superhero movies simply don't have anymore, at least not the way they did in 2012 or 2019. The genre is shrinking, and unless you're "The Avengers" or Spider-Man, no executive shuffle is going to bring that back. Rebooting the DCU for the third time in a decade is an admission that nobody at the top actually knows what the DCU is supposed to be.
Gunn and Safran thought they were safe and were already plotting a third "Superman" movie, which Gunn had begun writing, when Ellison came knocking.