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Will Superman save the day, once again? That's the big question for DC Studios heading into 2025, as the entire hopes of a 10-year-plan rest on James Gunn’s Superman. If Superman hits? We're up, up, and away for the DCU. If it fails? Then those lofty ambitions will fall faster than the Man of Steel being brought down by Kryptonite.
Way back in January of 2023, Gunn – who had been hired as co-CEO of the new DC Studios in 2022 – unveiled an ambitious plan to reorganize the DC Comics-based properties into one, unified vision. Along with co-CEO Peter Safran and a team of writers, Gunn had developed a two-chapter story that would take eight to 10 years, with the first chapter titled 'Gods and Monsters'.
As initially announced, this would likely include everything from a new Superman movie written and directed by Gunn, to films for antihero team The Authority, Supergirl, and Swamp Thing. Then there are the TV projects like the animated Creature Commandos, live-action Green Lantern series Lanterns, and a Game of Thrones-esque series focusing on Wonder Woman’s home, Themyscira.
Even more ambitious than the interconnected plan, Gunn also talked up how actors would be cast in roles which would work across everything from live-action to animation and video games. They would also "soft reboot" the previous DCEU to include some of the best elements, like Viola Davis’s Amanda Waller and Gunn’s Peacemaker TV show.
A purposefully slow and careful start
Two years later, Gunn's plan for DC Studios is just getting started. Laudably, the writer/director/CEO has loudly and repeatedly declared that he won't greenlight any projects until everyone is happy with the script, meaning rather than figuring out a story on the fly (a repeated issue with not just other interconnected superhero universes, but nearly all big-budget Hollywood movies), films and TV shows that head into production can have a solid base to work from. But that also means many of the projects in that first announcement, including the Themyscira show Paradise Lost, comedy Booster Gold, Swamp Thing, and even the Batman project Brave and the Bold, are still TBD.
Instead, the only DCU proper project we have so far is Max's raunchy, violent animated show Creature Commandos, which wrapped up its first season on the streaming service earlier this month, and has been picked up for a second season – premiere date on that TBA. And in 2025, as the film adaptation of lauded comic book series Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow and the Lanterns TV series head into production, only two additional DCU projects are hitting your screens, large and small: Superman and Peacemaker Season 2.
On the latter, Gunn has noted that his Peacemaker series is part of the aforementioned soft reboot except for one scene (that would be the DCEU’s Justice League showing up in the final episode). And while the first season was critically acclaimed, it’s unlikely the second season will be a massive breakout hit, so much as more of the same. One possible exception there? If, like The Penguin before it, HBO decides to air Peacemaker on the channel, it could help raise the profile of the show beyond the hardcore DC fans (and fans of John Cena).
Creature Commandos too played to the DC and James Gunn faithful: it's a hit inasmuch as Gunn has said viewership increased week over week on Max. But its cultural footprint otherwise has been relatively small and as of time of writing, it has yet to break into Nielsen’s Top 10 for streaming originals, one of the few reliable third-party metrics for streaming success.
So, it looks like this is a job for Superman.
Look up
Hitting theaters in July, Gunn has a chance to make his statement about the DCU, and even superheroes as a whole, with Superman. While Creature Commandos was a project Gunn worked on prior to snagging the CEO job, this is one he’s using to kick off not just the formal introduction of the Man of Steel on screen in the form of actor David Corenswet, but an entire array of heroes and villains including Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult), Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan), Green Lantern Guy Gardner (Nathan Fillion), Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced), Mr. Terrific (Edi Gathegi), and many, many more. Heck, even Milly Alcock’s Supergirl is reported to be making an appearance in the movie meaning as usual, Superman has the weight of the whole world on his shoulders.
That’s a lot of pressure to put on any movie, but it needs to hit. Not just for Gunn's DC Studios and the future of the DCU, but for the parent company Warner Bros. Discovery. If you’re going to invest in a decade of movies and TV shows, the kick-off needs to be strong. And working against this new movie? No Superman movie has ever broken $300 million domestically at the box office, with the exception of Batman v Superman, aka the one with Batman (DC’s cash cow) at the front of the title. Additionally, none have ever broken a billion dollars at the worldwide box office, the modern threshold for box office success… Including BvS.
Also working against Superman? The DC movies have been in freefall at the box office for a long time. From 2022’s Black Adam on, DC-based movies have struggled to find an audience in theaters. While fans might chalk that up to the vestigial limb nature of the DCEU after the announcement that Gunn was taking over, there’s an open question whether audiences care about DC superheroes – other than Batman – at all. Heck, it’s also an open question whether, after decades of cultural domination, audiences have become exhausted by the concept of superheroes entirely.
All eyes on the box office
Let’s be frank here: even if Superman is a critical success, a la pretty much every Gunn project including Creature Commandos, Peacemaker, all of the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, and The Suicide Squad, money is what keeps the machine going. If Superman is a box office success, that gives Gunn the ammunition to continue his admirable creative ambitions ranging from a Mike Flanagan-written Clayface movie to the fascinating-sounding puppet/CGI hybrid Dynamic Duo.
On the other hand, if Superman does 'okay', i.e. in the range of previous Superman movies, there's no way that doesn't impact what seems to be an otherwise hands-off approach from Warner Bros. Discovery thus far. The global box office is key here, but anything south of that billion-dollar mark likely leads to at least a few more studio notes heading to James Gunn's inbox, and potentially somewhat of a reassessment of the less likely box office prospects (see Clayface and Dynamic Duo above).
But if Superman does badly, i.e. in the range of nearly every DC project since 2022, then that puts the entire 10-year plan into doubt. By that point, Supergirl and Lanterns will likely move ahead since they will have already wrapped (or are close to wrapping). But the extensive, measured approach Gunn has been taking to DC Studios? That almost assuredly gets called into question, and perhaps jettisoned entirely. And if that's the case, and we do witness the death of Superman, Warner Bros. is going to do what they always do: light the Bat-signal, and hope that Batman can save the day.
Superman releases in theaters on July 11 2025. For more, check out the new DC movies coming your way, plus our guide on how to watch the DC movies in order.
