James Gunn is Leaving One Big Disney Blunder Back At Marvel Studios

While James Gunn’s rebooted DCU stands to benefit a lot from his experience working on a big trilogy over at the opposition, there’s one habit that the accomplished filmmaker won’t be bringing over to his new empire, and it’s a pretty big relief for fans.

While the DCU has had a rocky existence in the modern sense of an interconnected franchise, the brand’s potential for all sorts of awesome superhero films and shows has arguably always exceeded Marvel’s. With its plethora of fan-favorite heroes, DC has an advantage in how it handles scale and crossover events, with a flexibility that makes Batman’s antics against Darkseid just as plausible and entertaining as members of the intergalactic Green Lantern Corps doing Earthbound detective work. With more characters and even more recognizable villains, the potential projects for Gunn’s live-action reboot universe are countless.

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Despite the mountain of projects fans would certainly love to have confirmed, it seems that there’s going to be very little of that going on over the next few years. While a source close to James Gunn discusses Marvel/DC comparisons and admits that there are some similarities in the process, there’s one thing that Gunn is making very clear won’t be a shared feature of the new DCU and his experience with Marvel: the announcements. In response to a question put to Gunn on Threads by a fan concerning whether or not his DCU would ever do a release schedule like Marvel Studios boss Kevin Fiege does, Gunn responded that “It won’t be exactly like Marvel because nothing is greenlit before we have a finished script.” The comments, as well as answering the question, highlight a real problem at the House of Ideas’ adaptation division.

While the old DCEU had myriad problems, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has also managed to work its way into a troublesome spot with its expansive slate of films and shows, many announced years ahead of schedule with no tangible work started on them. This isn’t a superhero genre issue, as multiple announced Star Wars projects have also been canned at Lucasfilm, another branch on the Disney tree. Many of the projects are announced with nothing written and no creatives or actors firmly attached, leading to a long process of actually building up the project from scratch in the public eye. This invites a ton of scrutiny, especially with projects that end up never making it to screen or that have to be rushed out to satiate expectations.

While the decision to keep things understated until there’s something substantial to work on is pragmatic and admirable, some fans might be disappointed at the lack of pageantry. For quite a few fans, including many superfans of both Marvel and DC, the long-term anticipation and payoff that comes with having a schedule outlined years in advance is part of the fun, and if Gunn’s new franchise is as much of a success as Warner Bros. Discovery hopes it will be, the pressure to show a longer and more exciting roadmap will only mount. Ultimately, the DC Studios boss made the right decision on this issue, and he certainly seems confident in that assertion. It helps that Gunn has been pretty blunt about certain products not being actualized, emphasizing a focus on quality over quantity that tracks pretty well with his more recent comments about not getting greenlit without a solid script. Thanks to this frank approach and his loud social media engagements, fans and execs alike know where Gunn stands on unsubstantiated claims and premature announcements and will likely fall in line going forward, no matter how successful the franchise gets.

Results do tend to speak louder than just the words, and with Gunn’s first DCU show’s Rotten Tomatoes score being a certified fresh first showing of his process, there isn’t much of a case to be made against how he wants things done. If 2025’s Superman can impress as well, Gunn would have gone a long way to prove himself as a leader and visionary director for the rest of DC’s upcoming offerings. In the meantime, fans will hopefully enjoy Creature Commandos as much as the critics that previewed it did and bide the time until David Corenswet’s highly anticipated debut.

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Source: James Gunn/Threads