“Everything’s Going To Be Totally Different”: James Gunn Addresses The DCU’s Future & Current Release Schedule

James Gunn has detailed more about how the DC Universe will be executed across the big and small screens in a recent interview. The DC Universe’s Chapter 1: “Gods and Monsters” slate will open a new era for Warner Bros. Discovery with their DC IPs, lead by DC Studio co-CEOs Gunn and Peter Safran. With many wondering how the DC Universe will be different from the DCEU, Gunn has been clarifying what fans should expect from the reboot.

In a new interview with Jonatan Blomberg from MovieZine while promoting Creature Commandos, Gunn opened up more about how the DC Universe will have a range of different stories across TV and film. Gunn described his hopes of the DC Universe being able to mirror DC’s success at having a wide range of different tones and moods in their comics, sharing the following:

Everything’s going to be totally different. One of the things I love about DC Comics is that they’ve always been able to tell different stories in different ways. They’ve told stories that were more family-orientated, stories that were more adult-orientated, dark stories, light stories. I think for us, we just want to tell a bunch of different stories. A lot of those different stories are going to be in the DCU.
We have something that’s relatively serious like Superman and then something that’s relatively comedic like Peacemaker all in the same universe.
Something very adult like Peacemaker [and] something pretty family-friendly like Superman.

Even before the DC Universe got up and running, Gunn made it clear that his franchise would avoid not only the errors of the DCEU but also its biggest competitor. Gunn was asked on Thread by a fan if DC Studios will ever do a release schedule like Kevin Feige does for Marvel Studios’ Phases. However, the DC Studios boss stressed that “It won’t be exactly like Marvel because nothing is greenlit before we have a finished script,” which goes back to Gunn’s original comments about how projects move forward in the DC Universe.

Something like Gunn’s Superman movie wouldn’t have even started casting had the script not been at its strongest, which already avoids a lot of the headaches that were seen during the DCEU movie timeline era. The same could be said for Peacemaker season 2, as the arrival of the new season will be more than three years after season 1 completed its run on Max. With a focus on providing a wide range of stories, this approach should pay even more dividends, as it ensures each project hits on the right tone before production goes any further.

From Gunn’s latest comments and how they foreshadow a DC Universe that will have a variety of tones, characters, and stories, it will be exciting to see the franchise after multiple movies and TV shows have been released and witness the vast differences across the continuity. That said, this seems like it could be visible in the DCU’s first two releases alone, since Creature Commandos and Superman look to be very different projects for the franchise.

These comments also bode well for the future of the franchise, which could theoretically appeal to viewers wanting enormously different things from DC releases at the same time. Hopefully, as other DC Universe movies and TV shows go into filming next year, new updates on things like The Brave and The Bold, Paradise Lost, Booster Gold, The Authority, and more will arrive throughout 2025.

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Source: MovieZine & James Gunn/YouTube & Threads