The comic book genre continues to be a wildly popular one, with a number of shared universes competing for box office supremacy. DC Studios co-CEO James Gunn has been crafting a new DCU, with the first slate of projects titled Gods and Monsters. While Superman making money at the box office, Gunn recently explained why he scrapped a previously greenlighted project.
The DCU (which is streaming with a Max subscription) began with Creature Commandos and debuted on the big screen with Superman. Although we were given a roadmap of TV and movie projects, Gunn recently spoke to Rolling Stone and made it clear that he's taking care with each new release. That includes dropping a mysterious title entirely, as he shared:
Yeah. We just killed a project. Everybody wanted to make the movie. It was greenlit, ready to go. The screenplay wasn’t ready. And I couldn’t do a movie where the screenplay’s not good. And we’ve been really lucky so far, because Supergirl’s script was so fucking good off the bat. And then Lanterns came in, and the script was so fucking good. Clayface, same thing. So fucking good. So we have these scripts that we’ve been really lucky with or wise in our choices or whatever the combination is.
Give us names, Mr. Gunn! While the acclaimed filmmaker is keeping his cards close to the chest, I'm curious about what recent DC script simply didn't make the cut. Gods and Monsters' schedule named a ton of TV and movie titles, most of which we haven't gotten update on. As such, it feels like it could be about nearly any of them.
Rather than pushing through projects that aren't ready, it seems the Guardians of the Galaxy director isn't afraid to axe bad scripts. This might be an encouraging sign for fans, especially those who were dissatisfied with the peaks and valleys of DC's previous shared universe.
While a ton of upcoming DC movies were announced, they're not all guaranteed to actually hit theaters. Even Gunn recently scrapped one, he seems hyped about what's coming next, including the Supergirl movie and Clayface. I mean, he dropped multiple F-bombs in response to those title's scripts. That must have made the discrepancy between those and whatever clunker he got (and dropped) even more obvious.
On top of maintaining a high quality of script, it seems like James Gunn is also focused on making the DCU a more interconnected place than its predecessor. We've already seen a number of crossovers; Karl Urban voiced Rick Flag Sr. in Creature Commandos before playing him in live-action for Superman. That movie also featured the debuts of Nathan Fillion's Guy Gardner and Isabela Merced's Hawkgirl before they reprise their roles in Peacemaker Season 2.
Superman is in theaters now as part of the 2025 movie release list, and Peacemaker's second season will debut on HBO Max on August 21st. We'll just have to wait and see if Gunn reveals which DC project recently got the axe.
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