Leadership continuity at DC Studios
James Gunn and Peter Safran, who head the Warner Bros-owned label DC Studios, will keep leading the film, television and comic book production hub after Paramount closes its acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery. The pair recently met with David Ellison, the new co-CEO of Skydance, to discuss their future, and the conversation went well, according to sources on Friday morning. Paramount and DC could not be reached for comment.[S1]
As part of the newly announced organization, every film division belonging to Paramount and Warner Bros will now answer to Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein, the co-chairs of Paramount Pictures. Meanwhile, the fate of Warner Bros motion picture heads Michel De Luca and Pamela Abdy has not been settled at the rebranded Skydance entertainment company; those two have not yet held a conversation with Ellison.[S1]
DC's production slate and recent performance
Gunn has been filming the Superman sequel Man of Tomorrow, scheduled for release on July 9, 2027. The label's Clayface, centered on the Batman antagonist, is its first lower-budget genre movie and opens on October 23. Warner Bros' second highest-grossing film last year was Gunn's Superman, which took in more than $618 million worldwide. Also in production at DC is Matt Reeves' sequel The Batman Part II, set for February 18, 2028. This past summer's Supergirl performed poorly, with a global gross of $126.4 million.[S1]
Turning to television, the DC-HBO Max show Lanterns has performed strongly in the ratings. Created by Tom King, Damon Lindelof and Chris Mundy, its third installment attracted 10 million viewers around the world within its first three days, 7 million of them from the U.S. According to the company, the premiere episode has now been watched by over 20 million people globally since Lanterns debuted on August 16, and that number keeps rising. The program arrived as one of HBO Max's leading offerings.[S1]
Background on the DC Studios appointments
In October 2022, Safran and Gunn were named to head DC Studios, a move that was part of a broader label strategy devised by WBD CEO David Zaslav to replicate Disney's model of housing multiple production heads under banners like Marvel Studios, Lucasfilm and Pixar. It may well have been the first instance, aside from Charlie Chaplin, in which a filmmaker, Gunn, simultaneously held a studio executive role.[S1]
By that point, Safran had established an impressive track record at Warners/New Line through the multibillion-dollar The Conjuring franchise, and he had produced DC films including Shazam and Aquaman. He was also a producer on Gunn's 2021 movie The Suicide Squad and its HBO Max spinoff Peacemaker, which features John Cena and has run for two seasons.[S1]
