DC Studios co-CEOs James Gunn and Peter Safran were fired Friday, even though their contracts ran through April of next year.
There are now reports that the axe fell for one reason: to get Gunn out of the way of what is shaping up to be another disaster, his sequel to Superman (2025), Man of Tomorrow.
According to various reports, Man of Tomorrow is already in the can, and Gunn has finished his director’s cut. Ah, but this exclusive report claims that the primary reason Skydance CEO David Ellison opened the trapdoor early on Safran and Gunn was to get Gunn out of the building on December 1. Now a new team will come in and try to fix the movie, which is scheduled for a July release.
“They wanted Gunn out by Dec. 1 so they could oversee the editing/post so that Gunn had no say in the final cut of [Man of Tomorrow], which right now they’re not excited about,” one source told Cosmic Book News. “It’s too bloated, and some characters and even easter eggs may not make the final cut, which is why they had to fire him now, and not wait to the end of his contract in April.”
“Gunn and Safran’s contracts run through April 2027. Waiting for the contracts to run out would have meant Gunn finishing his movie his way.”
Gunn’s firing is no surprise.
Nor is it a surprise that Man of Tomorrow is reportedly shaping up to be a disaster.
Superman was not that great. Some claim it made money with a $618 million global haul. I don’t believe that. Either way, a Superman movie should be 1) a billion-dollar blockbuster and 2) a cultural phenomenon. Gunn fell way short with a middling movie that contained zero magic.
This, from the far-left Hollywood Reporter, is most telling:
After surviving a merger that claimed the jobs of celebrated Warner Bros. heads Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy, the duo were basking in the modest success of Clayface, a horror movie released Oct. 21 that passed $100 million globally on a $44 million budget. There was even talk of doing more spooky, slimmed-down DC movies.
So, Safran and Gunn were celebrating a $44 million movie hitting $100 million at the global box office. You have got to be kidding me. No wonder they were fired. These guys are either delusional, smoking their own supply, or have no standards whatsoever.
That $44 million was only for the production budget. Add in promotion, and you’re talking about a Clayface that cost at least $100 million. That puts break-even at $200 million, a number Clayface may not even reach.
But let’s pretend Clayface makes $250 million globally, which means a $25 million profit. A $25 million profit on a movie that had zero impact on the culture and that did nothing to boost excitement about what comes next from the DC movie universe is not what David Ellison, Warner Bros., the stockholders, or superhero fans want.
And then comes the kill shot:
There was even talk of doing more spooky, slimmed-down DC movies.
What?!
Why?!
Oh, you are so fired.
James Gunn obviously lives somewhere deep in the recess of his own ass.
As I explained yesterday:
My theory on Gunn is that he made one decent movie, the original Guardians of the Galaxy, and everything after was a reheated version of the same. Gunn’s sensibility worked that one time. The problem is that his sensibility — ironic distance, shallow snark, meta jokes, mocking the genre — wears pretty thin after a while. The first time we all feel smart for getting the jokes. After that, it feels like he’s mocking the audience for liking what they like.
A lot is being made out of the Christian faith of Gunn’s replacement, Jeremy Latcham. If you listen closely to what Latcham’s saying, he’s not saying Captain America will start preaching the Gospel. If you pay attention, Latcham is all about the classic storytelling that made Marvel into Marvel before Marvel blew itself up by embracing woketardery.
Gunn is anti-classic storytelling. He shits all over everything and pretends it’s cool. That’s fine for one movie, but as this insightful X-er put it: Gunn and Safran “made Superman a punk-rock yelling manchild, the Els [Superman’s birth parents] genocidal maniacs, the Kents [Superman’s Earth parents] hicks, Supergirl a drunkard, Gorilla Grodd a frat bro, killed Hal Jordan, turned John Stewart into an enemy of Hal & the GL Corps, and prioritized Peacemaker, Guy Gardner, Krypto, & Clayface.”
