DC Studios head James Gunn recently shared that he, too, had doubts about the new DCU's lifespan. Gunn took over the super-powered franchise back in late 2022, rebooting DC's on-screen efforts in an attempt to create yet another interconnected comic book canon made up of movies and TV shows. The fruits of that labor finally began to show out in 2025, with Gunn's Creature Commandos, Superman, and Peacemaker hitting the scene, all to positive reviews; however, it was not always such a sure thing, and Gunn knows that.
Speaking on Deadline's Crew Call podcast, Gunn admitted that leading up to the release of Superman, he had doubts about whether his DCU would even get the chance to flourish, or if it would be cut off before it could succeed.
When asked about a potential feeling of relief for the director after the success of Superman, Gunn revealed, "It's just an enormous sense of relief," saying that before the high-flying blockbuster came to theaters, he was genuinely "concerned with the life and death of the DC brand:"
"It's just an enormous sense of relief. But it's not only relief. It's relief, and then followed very quickly by excitement, because Superman, in some ways, was the proof of concept. It was so, so hard, in the same way that Guardians 1 was so, so hard. And then once you're kind of in the groove, you realize, 'Oh, this is what works. This is what doesn't. This is where we can go with this.' But it means that now we have the freedom to tell these other stories in a way that's really exciting. And so now, I can just be creative and I don't have to be as concerned with the life and death of the DC brand as I was a month and a half ago."
With the success of Superman, Peacemaker, and Creature Commandos, Gunn says he can now "just be creative," seemingly having proven he can get the DCU up and running. He now has a foundation from which he can build, having been given some leeway by the Warner Bros. brass to create his DC world as he sees fit.
There is a clear wrench that could be thrown Gunn's way, however, in the post-Superman era. In the months since the DCU officially kicked off, Warner Bros. has reportedly put itself up for sale. This injects an ounce of uncertainty into the DCU picture, as a new ownership picture could shake DC's super-powered business to its core.
Gunn himself has commented on this, previously telling fans that whether he gets to explore the rest of his DCU plans "depends on a lot of things," as a direct allusion to Warner Bros.' uncertain future.
Why Would James Gunn Doubt His Own DCU Plans?
Hearing these admissions of doubt come out of James Gunn will almost surely come as a surprise to some fans. Why would someone as high-ranking as he is with so many big-screen hits under his belt question the very universe he is creating? There are several reasons.
James Gunn was stepping into a sea of expectations when he took the DC Studios job. DC's recent on-screen history has been fraught, to say the least, and Gunn was the one appointed to "save" it.
He was not just bringing a single movie to an already established, money-printing franchise (as he had done with Marvel and Guardians of the Galaxy); he was being given the task of redefining the status quo at DC, all while winning over fans who had turned their backs on the blue brand.
Of course, doubt was going to creep in. If Superman had not hit, the DCU would have been dead on arrival. The movie almost had to be a success to prove that Gunn and company could do it.
Had the movie fallen flat, DC would have had to consider abandoning the idea of an interconnected on-screen canon and completely reconfigure its entire theatrical strategy.
That is not what happened, though. Superman bucked the trend for DC, laying at the very least a solid foundation for the DCU going forward.
