Why James Gunn Is the Best News the DCEU Could Have Asked For

Lately, it’s felt like there’s been nothing but bad news coming out of DC’s movies and TV shows. The Batgirl movie has been canceled and thrown into a vault. The Arrowverse is all but dead. And we’re probably not going to get any of those JJ Abrams-produced DC shows we were promised.

But every streak of bad luck has to end eventually, and the winds are finally shifting in a better direction at Warner Bros. Discovery. Fresh off the opening weekend success of Black Adam, Warners has revealed that James Gunn and Peter Safran are heading up the reorganized DC Studios.

This is hardly the first time we’ve been promised that DC will become a Hollywood force to rival Marvel Studios, but with Gunn and producer Peter Safran steering the ship, we finally have reason to be optimistic. Let’s take a closer look at why this shakeup is exactly the sort of good news DC has been needing.

Bringing Stability to the DCEU

There are plenty of reasons why DC has struggled to consistently compete with Marvel at the box office over the years, but what it really boils down to is that the company has become its own worst enemy. There never seems to be a clear direction for the DCEU or a consistent figure at the helm. Marvel has benefited from Kevin Feige’s vision and leadership ability. DC, by comparison, has cycled through countless executives, with every corporate shakeup resulting in new leadership and yet another strategic pivot.

It’s getting to the point where any strategy – good or bad – is preferable to DC’s current lack of direction. Warner Bros. Discovery president David Zaslav wants a 10-year plan for the DC movie line, and that means finally picking a course and staying with it for the long haul.

Fortunately, Warners didn’t pick just anyone to be in charge, but a director with a lot of experience in making expensive, crowd-pleasing superhero movies. Nor is Warners simply trying to replicate Marvel’s approach. Instead of having a single Kevin Feige-type figure at the helm, the newly branded DC Studios is under the joint control of Gunn and producer Peter Safran. As co-CEOs, Gunn will focus on the creative side of things while Safran, one of the driving forces behind the Conjuring and Aquaman franchises, will handle the business side. This new system is more comparable to Pixar’s approach to making movies than the Marvel Studios method. And we don’t think anyone can argue the Pixar model doesn’t yield strong results.

The Master of Many Genres

He may be best known for directing the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, but Gunn has hardly pigeon-holed himself as “a superhero guy.” Gunn first broke into the Hollywood mainstream writing 2004’s Dawn of the Dead remake and the live-action Scooby-Doo movies. He established himself as one of the most exciting new horror directors in years with 2006’s Slither. He even tackled a very different breed of superhero movie with 2010’s Super, a film as about as far removed from the slick, big-budget world of the MCU as you can get.

Gunn is clearly a filmmaker comfortable wearing many different hats. He’s a screenwriter and director, and even a pretty talented musician, to boot. He’s happy to tackle big-budget blockbusters and quirky indie movies.

Gunn wrote on Facebook in 2010, “I’ve made B-movies, independent films, children’s movies, horror films, and gigantic spectacles. I find there are plenty of people everywhere making movies for a buck or to feed their own vanity. And then there are people who do what they do because they love story-telling, they love cinema, and they want to add back to the world some of the same magic they’ve taken from the works of others.”

DC needs someone who can dabble in different genres and has as much appreciation for the quirky, low-budget gems as they do the blockbuster superhero movies. The DC Universe itself is a vast and diverse place. You have the mighty heroes of the Justice League rubbing elbows with horror characters like Swamp Thing and John Constantine, Wild West characters like Jonah Hex and the all-powerful beings seen in The Sandman.

It’s all too easy for DC to play it safe and keep cranking out more Batman and Wonder Woman movies. But to really tap into the full potential of this shared universe, they need someone like Gunn who’s so adept at thinking outside the box.

Gunn is clearly a filmmaker comfortable wearing many different hats. He’s a screenwriter and director, and even a pretty talented musician, to boot.

Superhero Tone Management

Being a good director is as much about managing a film’s tone as anything else. That’s especially true for superhero movies, where directors don’t always have as much control over the visual side of things as they do on smaller-scale films. It’s a tough job to find a balance between fleshing out these characters and making room for those obligatory, CGI-heavy battle scenes, all while keeping the studio bean counters happy.

This is one area where even Marvel has begun to struggle lately. The MCU has never been guilty of taking itself too seriously, but things have gone a little off the rails in Phase 4. The post-Endgame films have struggled to create a sense of danger or stakes for our heroes. Thor: Love and Thunder is so focused on being a silly romantic comedy it loses sight of the powerful drama fueling the comics that inspired it.

Like the Russo Bros., Gunn is especially skillful at maintaining that balancing act and crafting films that are as endearing and emotionally weighty as they are fun. The Guardians of the Galaxy movies are hilarious, yet they also treat Star-Lord and his team as a dysfunctional family who grow and evolve together. Many fans have criticized DCEU films like Man of Steel and Batman v Superman for depicting these heroes as aloof gods rather than three-dimensional people. DC needs someone who recognizes that superheroes can have fun and struggle with emotional pathos in the same movie.

Like the Russo Bros., Gunn is especially skillful at maintaining that balancing act and crafting films that are as endearing and emotionally weighty as they are fun.

Connecting DC’s Movies and TV

As much as DC has struggled to measure up to the MCU on the big screen, they’ve often had the upper hand on the small screen. Doom Patrol and Harley Quinn both rank among the best shows on the air right now, superhero or otherwise. And while its star is fading these days, the Arrowverse proved it was possible to create a thriving small-screen universe of interconnected superhero shows.

That being said, Marvel has DC beat in one important area. They’ve cracked the code for building a shared universe where both movies and shows can coexist and build on one another. Sure, there were some growing pains for a while, as shows like Agents of SHIELD and Daredevil had a pretty one-sided relationship with the larger MCU. But with the advent of Disney+ and new shows like WandaVision and Loki, TV has become every bit the driving force that films are in the MCU.

DC is still figuring that out, as most of their current live-action series take place in self-contained universes. They couldn’t even pull off a shared universe between Titans and Doom Patrol, despite the latter technically being a spinoff of the former. And while it seemed like JJ Abrams might lead the charge with his Justice League Dark shows, it’s now looking increasingly unlikely any of those series will see the light of day.

Only Gunn has been successful in crafting a TV series that’s meaningfully connected to the DCEU. His Peacemaker series picks up where 2021’s The Suicide Squad left off, even cramming in a few familiar faces from the movies in the process. Peacemaker sets an example that DC clearly wants to follow, as The Batman is also poised to get several TV spinoffs in addition to a sequel film. There’s no reason DC’s movies and TV shows can’t work together as a cohesive whole, and Gunn might be just the guy to finally get that ball rolling.

Marvel and DC’s Talent War

Gunn is clearly a talented storyteller who has a lot to offer the DCEU during this shaky, uncertain phase of its existence. But let’s also not ignore the very obvious benefit to DC here. Locking Gunn into an exclusive contract also hurts Marvel in a very direct way.

Gunn has been a key player in shaping the MCU as it’s expanded from core franchises like Iron Man and Captain America into quirkier Marvel franchises like Guardians of the Galaxy. Not many directors could have transformed the Guardians of the Galaxy from obscure Marvel comic into one of the biggest Hollywood franchises in the world. And as we’ve explored already, Gunn is one of the best when it comes to combining blockbuster fun with real emotional stakes.

Marvel’s loss is definitely DC’s gain here. They’re losing one of their most important creative voices in a time when the MCU is still in the process of finding itself again in the Multiverse Saga. It’s easy to imagine a world where Gunn had remained with Marvel after wrapping Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and taken the lead on one of the upcoming Avengers movies. That’s clearly not happening now.

DC’s locking down Gunn may be an early move in a talent war we often see on the comic book side of things. Both companies have a habit of tying up top-selling writers and artists in exclusive contracts, thereby denying the competition the fruits of their labor. Warners also recently signed The Batman director Matt Reeves into a first-look deal, suggesting we won’t be seeing Reeves playing in the MCU anytime soon. If DC is trying to beat Marvel at its own game, they need all the creative talent they can get. Keeping James Gunn in the DC house is a move that should make even Marvel feel a little nervous.

Do you think Gunn is the guiding hand the DCEU needs right now? Will DC finally become a Hollywood force to rival Marvel? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.