The DCU’s New Kid-Oriented Shows Are a Smart Move for the Studio

James Gunn and Peter Safran’s revamped DCU is off and running, with one project already released and plenty more on the way. It seems like new films and series are being announced every week, with recent additions like the Mike Flanagan-scripted Clayface movie grabbing headlines. Just a few ago, the studio announced the development of three new animated series, and it seems like further evidence that Gunn and Safran have a solid long-term plan in place.

These shows, in Safran’s words, will be geared towards “younger skewing” audiences, beginning with My Adventures with Green Lantern, where a high school student finds a Lantern’s ring and the powers that come with it. This will be followed by DC Super Powers, an academia-style show where a host of young heroes will learn to wield their powers, and Starfire, an origin story for the Teen Titans character. Little is known about these series beyond their general descriptions and the showrunners who will be handling them. However, they’re a smart move for the studio, whose recent project announcements have mainly focused on capturing an adult audience.

Why Some Younger Focused Projects Will Help the DCU

Gunn initially made for an exciting voice at the helm of the DCU, because it gave him an avenue to express the mix of pitch-black humor and deep love for comics lore that he’d had to suppress during his time in the MCU. Gunn cut his teeth on violent and profane comedies like 2006’s Slither and 2010’s Super. It seemed that DC was willing to let him go to darker places than the more cautious executives at Disney ever would.

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Gunn wasted no time proving this true with 2021’s The Suicide Squad, dispatching third-string villains with bloody aplomb. This sensibility carried over into the Max spinoff series Peacemaker, and most recently, Creature Commandos, which used its animated format to get gorier than any DC project before. It was a shot in the arm for a studio whose output had been sagging under the weight of the Snyderverse era and its attempts to inject some levity like its rivals over at Marvel. Many of the other previously announced DCU projects, like the upcoming film The Authority and the Peacemaker spinoff Waller, will likely follow this adult-oriented path.

As fun as these projects have been and will likely continue to be, they really only appeal to one particular part of the fanbase. Right now, DC is catering to those who have embraced Gunn’s approach as an antidote to the broaded reach of the MCU. Superman and the in-development Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow will likely try to appeal to both adult and younger viewers. Still having a few projects focused specifically on kids and young adults seems like a welcome way to reach a different audience and diversify the studio’s offerings.

Diverse Offerings are Crucial to the DCU’s Long-term Success

One of the most exciting aspects of the DCU going forward is its willingness to embrace a variety of genres and styles within the shared universe banner. Fitting with Gunn’s origins in the movie business, the Clayface movie has been described as a body horror story. Meanwhile, James Mangold’s in-development Swamp Thing project seems to be playing in the realm of gothic horror. Luca Guadagnino’s Sgt. Rock will be a WWII story, sitting alongside more conventional superhero films like Superman and the upcoming Batman movie The Brave and the Bold.

This is probably the biggest contrast between the DCU and the MCU’s approaches. The latter has been focused on trying to tell stories that take their characters seriously, but don’t alienate younger viewers in the process. While this approach has merit (and has made the MCU the most successful superhero saga of all time), it’s also led to a sense of familiarity over the years, and at times it verges on formulaic. Marvel has seemed more willing to try different types of stories in recent years, like the political-style thriller series Secret Invasion and the upcoming Daredevil: Born Again, which promises to go darker and more violent than previous MCU projects.

Gunn and Safran seem more than willing to embrace the many possibilities of comic book narratives, and their slate of upcoming movies and shows reflects that. Adding some more kid-oriented projects into that lineup feels like a logical extension of their ethos. It’s a smart way to appeal to the younger fans who get hooked on comics, some of whom will likely grow into the lifelong fans that are lining up to catch the DCU’s more adult-focused offerings as they’re released. Comic book fandom is as vast and diverse as the stories themselves, so it makes perfect sense to create an array of projects that can appeal to as many parts of that fanbase as possible.

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