With either a split, a merger, or both on the horizon for Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), the speculation machine is ramping up regarding the DCU endgame and what James Gunn’s superhero cinematic universe is building toward.
David Corenswet stars in “Superman.”
Source: Warner
DCU Has Super-Success
There’s a lot of mistaken analysis out there about Gunn, the DCU, and Superman. Some websites (mostly on low-quality fan sites that push rumors and clickbait) are trying to spin things as if Superman is some sort of box office failure and that audiences aren’t interested (the film generated more than $100 million in profits, had great reviews and audience scores, and did big numbers in theaters and home entertainment), but you can safely ignore it and anyone pushing those false narratives.
What’s actually happening is very simple: WBD is up for buyout, and some fans want certain studios to buy it and fire Gunn to reinstall whatever personal preferences those fans have about DC movies. The theory is that studios will see fans acting mad and hear fan blogs claiming Superman was a failure, and that somehow those studio executives will be generally ignorant enough of how movies and box office and profits work to fall for it. Hint: they aren’t. Any changes a buyer wanted to implement would likely fall within a narrow range, but I think the primary DCU plans will remain as-is.
Gunn’s Superman is the most popular superhero film of 2025, and it reset audience interest in DC with a box office result at least 40% or more higher than any of the previous nine DCEU movie from the past eight year. It beat all three Marvel Studios releases this year, including Marvel’s summer tentpole Fantastic Four: First Steps.
Superman also earned universal critical acclaim and high audience scores, as well as strong streaming numbers and home entertainment sales and rentals. The film will have generated significantly more than $100 million in profits and approaching $150 million globally when all is said and done this year. It’s not a failure, it didn’t underperform, it was widely beloved by mainstream audiences and most fans, and no amount of resentment or wishes or lies will change those facts.
DCU And The Future
Now, let’s get to the serious discussion.
First of all and to get it out of the way, whomever buys WBD (or WB post-split) should keep James Gunn and Peter Safran as co-CEOs of DC Studios and let them continue unimpeded in their plans for building up the DCU. I personally think it’s glaringly obvious that Apple should buy WBD or WB, and that it would be a bit crazy not to do so, frankly.
My guess is that Gunn is building toward something that’s not Justice League (and I’m not claiming that’s a unique guess or inspired by deep insight, as Gunn’s all but said as much publicly about upcoming plans and what to expect or not expect). I believe it will be a version of the Super Friends, and if so, then I would expect a Super Friends vs Legion of Doom movie.
Or perhaps it’ll be Justice Gang vs Injustice Gang, since the latter is from a Grant Morrison JLA comic book story and Gunn loves Morrison’s work. Gunn also used “Justice Gang” in the Superman movie, which just be a funny homage or maybe setting it up. I don’t seriously expect this, since the mainstream moviegoing public would have no association with those names and titles, but it’s amusing to consider the possibility.
My other main guess would be some sort of adaptation of the iconic comic book miniseries Kingdom Come, but only loosely adapted into the current DCU continuity instead of set in the future. Superman’s desire to be a positive role model and inspiration for other superheroes, but the fact a lot of them ignore his higher moral code and cause lots of destruction and even commit murder, mirrors themes and events in that beloved comic story, as does the existence of an alternate dimensional world used as a prison for superhumans the world wants to get rid of.
Side note here: For what it’s worth (and I know it’s not worth much these days to some folks over there), I’d either hold Kingdom Come for a distant future film after taking lots of time to build up the DCU and then do a big faithful adaptation in two parts. Short of that, however, I’d just license it to Netflix for Zack Snyder to adapt it as a live-action film in the future of the DCEU and with his previous cast of superheroes (those willing to return, and if some like Ben Affleck had no interest in returning then Snyder could use Michael Keaton as the post-The Flash version of the DCEU).
There are also some possible hints that perhaps Gunn is going to do a big twist on the “build up to a superhero team-up movie” approach. What if instead, the big DCU crossover event is loosely adapting Salvation Run, with primarily a big cast of supervillains in an ensemble and Luthor as one of the leads?
Consider that they’re setting up both the Salvation prison planet and Checkmate elements of that story, plus Luthor as probably some sort of anti-hero in Gunn’s upcoming Man of Tomorrow movie scheduled for release in 2027 (which Gunn has described as more of a Lex Luthor story than Superman story), but also with Luthor in his traditional supervillain armored suit.
There’s lots of potential ways to make the Super Friends the existing superhero team of the DCU in-story without a literal crossover team-up movie establishing them (again, the Justice Gang already exists and has the Hall of Justice headquarters), and then adapting a mix of elements of Kingdom Come and Salvation Run stories together loosely into a new story, if we consider all of the above theories together.
There are also shared elements with Final Crisis, and that might be an interesting way for Gunn to take his newly minted DCU and its immediate embrace of the multiverse concept, and quickly get rid of that in favor of a permanent singular shared universe. Might that approach be used to smooth over which elements of the previous DCEU to continue holding onto in the future, and to even bring back some other past DC cinematic franchise elements to create a final new DC film universe cherrypicking all the best versions of the best things and putting them together.
That could mean (purely for a fun example to make the point about how it could play out if that approach happened) Grant Gustin as Barry Allen/the Flash, reprising his role from the terrific CW series; Ben Affleck returning as Batman, with a teenage son Damian as his Robin and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Dick Grayson/Nightwing; the current DCU cast of characters from Superman, Supergirl, Clayface, Peacemaker, and Lanterns; the entire team from Gunn’s The Suicide Squad; Xolo Maridueña Blue Beetle and Lesslie Grace as Batgirl; all/most of the casts of Black Lightning, Star Girl, Swamp Thing, and Doom Patrol; and maybe even the cast of HBO’s Watchmen miniseries.
Not at all to suggest that’s what they would do, or that it’s the best options if they did, but rather to demonstrate how versatile it could get in that direction. But this could just wind up repeating what The Flash movie already attempted in its failed box office soft-reboot of DC cinema. It also would feel like riffing on what Marvel Studios is currently doing with Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars. So I don’t expect a Final Crisis adaptation for that reason, at least not any time soon.
With the upcoming HBO miniseries Lanterns putting intergalactic cops Hal Jordan and John Stewart on an Earth-based homicide case linked to the larger looming threat against the DCU, and if the perpetrator of the murder is perhaps Magog. This is the character who commits a homicide at the start of the comic book story Kingdom Come, leading to the establishment of a super-prison and the subsequent event of the story. Alternately, it could be the Sinestro Corps Wars that’s on the horizon, and Sinestro could free villains from the Sanctuary super-prison to join his army of Yellow Lanterns, and it could even mix elements of both the Corps Wars storyline and Kingdom Come, if Gunn and the rest of the DC Studios team didn’t plan to directly adapt those anyway.
That’s merely a theory of one possibility for the DCU’s future, and there are certainly more. That Batman is being set up with his bat-family, with the super-prison Sanctuary as well as Checkmate entering the DCU setup, and with Man of Tomorrow’s upcoming positioning of Lex Luthor in his battle armor but as a main character, I personally lean toward expecting some adaptive mix of Kingdom Come and Salvation Run adapted into a Super Friends vs Legion of Doom event movie.
Whatever the DCU’s current plans, it’s true that some potential buyers might be more likely to shut down Gunn’s plans in favor of their own. But I think most studios will recognize the importance of the DC brand and how it’s well-positioned now, and wouldn’t risk upsetting those plans. The ones who would are also probably the least-likely to win a bidding war now. I’m probably way off in my own guesses about what’s to come, but we likely won’t get many clues until next year’s Lanterns series, Supergirl and Clayface movies. Until then, we’ll have to keep waiting, and keep guessing.