Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige has a big reason to be jealous of what James Gunn has been able to do already as DC Studios co-CEO. For years, Warner Bros. has been trying to build a DC Cinematic Universe that can rival Disney's MCU. The latest attempt began when The Suicide Squad director James Gunn and producer Peter Safran were hired as co-CEOs of DC Studios with a plan to launch a DCU reboot. The fruits of that labor have already been felt with a multi-year slate that started last year with Creature Commandos and will soon continue with Superman, Peacemaker Season 2, Lanterns, and more.
Over at Marvel Studios, Feige has been overseeing the MCU since the beginning, managing its creative and strategic direction while ensuring its connectivity. DC Studios is structured a little differently from Marvel Studios as James Gunn juggles co-CEO duties with Peter Safran. The former takes on a creatively-driven role while the latter leans more into business and production.
In just the first year of the DCU, Gunn has already begun fulfilling a promise to connect the superhero brand across movies, TV, and animation. This July's Superman is already linking into an animated series, Creature Commandos, and will have ties to live-action shows Peacemaker and Lanterns.
Read more about how Superman will officially connect to three DCU TV shows.
In the early days of the MCU, there were no TV shows as crossovers between the big and small screen were rare in the pre-streaming era. There wouldn't be an "MCU" TV show until Agents of SHIELD in 2013, and even then Feige's role was limited as they were created under Marvel Television, a division run by Jeph Loeb.
As Agents of SHIELD and other Marvel Television shows weren't under Feige's purview, their connections to MCU movies were consistently one-sided, leaving many to wonder if they were even canon to the wider world.
It wasn't until 2019 and the launch of Disney+ that Marvel Television was folded into Marvel Studios, allowing Feige full control of the MCU's small screen plans, leading to modern streaming series such as WandaVision, Loki, and more.
Of course, Marvel Studios has since incorporated Netflix shows such as Daredevil, The Punisher, and soon-to-be Jessica Jones into MCU canon, but the fate of Agents of SHIELD and other series remains unclear.
Fortunately for James Gunn, he has no such obstacles to overcome at DC Studios as he has full control of the blue brand's adaptations across all mediums, allowing him to develop and connect his DCU movies and shows exactly as he wishes.
But his TV advantage isn't the only thing that Kevin Feige should be jealous of James Gunn for, and the DCU boss has three more leg-ups on the MCU chief:
No Rights Issues
In the early days of the MCU, the rights to Marvel's most popular characters, such as the X-Men, Fantastic Four, and Spider-Man, had been sold off to other film studios. So, Marvel Studios, which was an independent production company throughout the development of Phase 1's initial projects, had to start out with more (at the time) B-list characters such as Iron Man.
The DCU has a leg-up in this sense as the film and TV rights to the whole blue brand are held at Warner Bros. As such, while Kevin Feige was limited by rights issues, James Gunn has free reign of his whole superhero universe for the DCU.
Extra Mediums
From the get-go, James Gunn confirmed the DCU will span four mediums - film, TV, animation, and video games. By contrast, Marvel Studios began exclusively on the big screen and only expanded to TV and animation in recent years while MCU movie tie-in games once existed in Phase 1, but those days are long gone.
Even now, all the MCU's animated projects so far have been relegated to alternate universes, meaning it is truly only connected in live-action formats for now.
Having access to four mediums of storytelling will certainly grant Gunn more versatility in building the DCU. The all-new cinematic universe will also expand to the page as an official Superman prequel novel has been announced.
James Gunn's Getting More Involved
Kevin Feige has served as executive producer in every MCU project, and James Gunn may do the same for the DCU, but his role goes beyond that. Given his writing and directing background, he will take a bigger role in forming the DCU's larger storyline and character arcs while continuing to helm projects too.
Gunn already wrote Creature Commandos, Superman, and Peacemaker Season 2 while continuing to oversee DC Studios as a whole. On top of that, he has directed Superman and some episodes of Peacemaker, and he has confirmed he is in the early stages of plotting his next project for the DCU.
