DC Studios Ousts James Gunn and Peter Safran After Costly Misses

James Gunn and Peter Safran are out as co-chiefs of DC Studios, eighteen months after David Zaslav toasted their "bold 10-year plan" with Champagne-ready optimism. Marvel Studios alum Jeremy Latcham takes over as president and chief creative officer, inheriting a slate that spent big and connected with almost no one.

The dismissal wasn't a total shock. Gunn and Safran had been assured a place in David Ellison's leadership team at Skydance after Paramount's $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery closed in October. Staying, though, would have meant a demotion: the duo previously answered directly to Zaslav, bypassing movie co-chairs Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy. Ellison and co-CEO Ynon Kreiz planned to move them under new Skydance Motion Picture Group chiefs Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein.

What went wrong at the box office?

The numbers tell a blunt story. Gunn's "Superman," starring David Corenswet, grossed $618 million against a $225 million budget — respectable, given the general decline of comic book movies, but not the kind of momentum that builds an interconnected universe. Then came July's "Supergirl," which flopped with $126 million globally against a $170 million budget. October's "Clayface" managed $109 million on $44 million, though sources say the body-horror thriller won't break even until downstream revenues are counted.

Sources suggest the thinking inside the studio was simple: they spent big, lost too much, and bet on projects that just weren't resonating. Insiders also questioned the choice of lesser-known characters — Superman's cousin Kara El-Zor and the Batman villain Clayface — over marquee names. The contrast with Marvel stings. July's "Spider-Man: Brand New Day" became the third-biggest movie in history with $2.5 billion, and December's "Avengers: Endgame" could challenge even that.

"The industry has taken away the wrong lessons from Marvel's success," a studio insider told Variety. "Higher budgets don't equal quality storytelling."

Did television fare any better?

Barely. DC's main small-screen success, "The Penguin" — Colin Farrell's "Batman" spinoff — was greenlit before Gunn and Safran arrived. Gunn's "Peacemaker," anchored by John Cena, debuted in 2022 before he took the studio job; its second season launched three years later and failed to match the first's buzz. "Lanterns," the pair's first live-action series, posted decent viewership but wasn't renewed.

"People cannot wait to make another season of a hit show," one company source said. Ouch.

The pairing was always curious. Safran, a steward of New Line's profitable "Conjuring" universe and producer on "Shazam!" and "Aquaman," knew balance sheets. Gunn, best known for directing Marvel's "Guardians of the Galaxy" trilogy, had to shepherd his own films while co-managing a slate. Collaborators praised his speed across simultaneous projects. He was candid about the strain.

"The thing my ADHD hyperfocus has had the most difficulty with has been dividing my time between projects I'm incredibly passionate about and the ones I'm not so much and all the things I have to do as a studio head," Gunn wrote on X after his ouster.

What happens next for DC?

Gunn and Safran stay involved, with less authority. Gunn directs next summer's "Superman: Man of Tomorrow," and the pair produce the 2027 series "The People v. Gorilla Grodd" — Skyler Gisondo reprising his Jimmy Olsen, Jimmy Tatro as Grodd — plus another season of "Creature Commandos."

Their decade-long strategy of sequels, spinoffs and stand-alone stories now hangs on Latcham's judgment. After "Man of Tomorrow," which returns Corenswet's Man of Steel and Nicholas Hoult's Lex Luthor, the pipeline holds only "The Batman Part II," delayed to 2028 — six years after Robert Pattinson's original. The oft-teased "Wonder Woman" reboot never got off the ground. Gunn has hinted he's writing another DC project, but continuing the old vision is Latcham's call.

Internally, hopes rest on a back-to-basics executive who helped shape the MCU. "Jeremy is the kind of guy who would go to Comic-Con to get an autograph from someone," another source said, "not someone who wants to be there signing autographs." For a studio that has burned through Geoff Johns, Jon Berg and Walter Hamada in a decade, that may be the most qualified praise on offer.