Davis Poole
Contributing Writer
Director and screenwriter James Gunn was appointed CEO of the newly-created entity of DC Studios in late 2022. Luckily for fans, he is no stranger to the world of superhero flicks — known for writing and directing comedic group adventure films, such as each of the three Guardians of the Galaxy (2014-2023) films, Scooby-Doo (2002) and The Suicide Squad (2021). Since his appointment, he has worked within the DC Universe to rival the Marvel Cinematic Universe. With four official projects under his belt, three of which garnering critical acclaim, has the recent oversaturation of superhero media made Gunn’s work fall under the radar?
Gunn’s first entry in the DCU, Creature Commandos (2024-25) has a positive rating of 7.8/10 on IMDb and a 93% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Superman has an 83% on Rotten Tomatoes and made over $600 million at the worldwide box office. However, Supergirl (2026), was critically panned and lost at least $50 million. Because of this one failure, many have written off the DC Universe as not only an unnecessary rehash of Zack Snyder’s DC Extended Universe, which very rarely received universally positive reviews (average Rotten Tomatoes rating of 60%, average IMDb rating of 6.4/10 over sixteen feature films). They also think the DCU is just another futile attempt at recreating the spectacular movies made before superhero fatigue set in.
A New York Times piece released a few weeks after Supergirl hit theatres stated that its failure at the box office “failed to give [DC Studios] what it most needed: evidence that…it had finally found a path back to sustained theatrical success,” meaning that in the midst of superhero fatigue, a film like Supergirl is exactly what would hurt the DC Universe most.
But the DCUis not what its naysayers may claim. The newest of the DCU’s endeavors is a television series on HBO Max entitled Lanterns, which has a 92% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 7.8/10 on IMDb. Not just another superhero show, Lanterns is more of a buddy detective western set mostly in Nowhereville, Nebraska, following an aging intergalactic cop as he trains his successor. Just over half of this series has been released thus far, but yet it is intriguing and perfectly blends the superhero and cop drama genres, as if comic book characters were dropped into the True Detective universe.
Lanterns’ premise is not so daunting as “the world is facing imminent doom,” but that is true to its nature as a detective story. It does not overstay its welcome and shows that the DCU can be much more than just another superhero franchise.
Two of the DCU’s four projects that have been released have been television shows, and one of those was 2D-animation, but yet they all take place in the same universe. In comparison, the MCU only began making television shows thirteen years into its run, it felt more like a cash-grab than anything else, especially because most of these shows had nothing to do with each other, and often took place in different universes. The only shows that have had major effects on other shows and movies in the universe since Avengers: Endgame are WandaVision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and Loki, which were all released in the same year.
The others, including but not limited to Moon Knight, Echo, Ironheart and even Hawkeye, seemed supplementary because none of their central characters have been a part of any of the films released. Avengers: Doomsday, which looks to be one of the highest grossing movies of the year, is only confirmed to have a few characters whose storylines have been expanded by Marvel Television.
The DCU, on the other hand, has already woven their television and their movies together, making sure that each character and storyline is dealt with in the way that best compliments the medium being used. A recent announcement by Gunn confirmed that a true crime mockumentary titled The People v. Gorilla Grodd will be released to HBO Max within the next few years.
This mini-series will be an in-universe documentary produced by The Daily Planet, the newspaper that Clark Kent / Superman works for in his eponymous film. By watching a mockumentary produced not by DC, but by characters inside DC, the viewer is thrust into a world shaped by the perspective of its characters, allowing us to receive a greater understanding of this DC world and how it works. A quote from Peter Safran, co-CEO of DC Studios, states that DC doesn’t “…serve one kind of audience, so why make one kind of movie?” (The Hollywood Reporter) Marvel took a different approach, and the repetitive formula it used got old with critics and fans after Endgame, as can be seen by the average Marvel movie’s Rotten Tomatoes critics’ score dropping from 85 to 74.
Based off the projects the DCU has already created and the way it has gone about making them, DC has a very bright future ahead of it, possibly even brighter and more lucrative than even the MCU. Even Marvel had a rough start: the second and third movies of the MCU, The Incredible Hulk and Iron Man 2 have been critically panned, and even the fourth and fifth films, Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger receive middling reviews.
So it is not yet time to write off DC and the many projects it has in the works because good things come to those who wait.