u/dick____trickle

I think we're all just thrown off by how beautifully these Hollywood people are aging. But look at how both Jason Ritter and Kelly Macdonald basically look the same as they were 10 years ago. So the way I see it, their characters' ages in 2016 are just the actors' real age minus ten. In short:

2016 timeline
William Macon - 61
Zoe Macon - 53
Billy Macon - 36
Kerry Kane - 40

William had Billy with another woman when he was 25. Zoe is Billy's step-mom.

With the release of Lanterns and the trailers for Clayface, the breadth of what the DCU aims to showcase is becoming more and more concrete. I really hope audiences respond, but whatever may end up happening to this franchise, this kind of risk-taking and creative boldness has already won my absolute respect.

Edit: I'M NOT IGNORING SUPERGIRL. I'm putting it in the same bucket as Superman.

I love the way sunlight is a recurring motif in Superman (2025). I know some people didn't like the blinding glare during Clark's speech to Lex, but looking at the movie as a whole, there is definite intentionality behind it. As the source of Clark's powers, sunlight represents Superman energy (bright, hopeful, earnest), the kind of energy the film embodies.

Credits to cinematographer Henry Braham. He's been replaced by Sam McCurdy (of Shogun fame) for Man of Tomorrow and I'm excited to see what he cooks up.

You gotta respect it mate, you gotta

If there's one area where misinformation and obfuscation is hideously rampant, it's AI. Obviously you can cover Anthropic objectively while taking their money, but tbh LS coverage of AI is really superficial and I can't help but wonder whether sponsorship is a reason.

There's been some talk of how Man of Tomorrow has an unwieldy cast, so I thought it'd be interesting to compare it to The Odyssey. They're more or less the same!

If you've seen The Odyssey, you'd know that the ensemble cast never detracts from the core story of Odysseus, and I have every faith that it'll be the same for MoT. Both films are set in a world that's lived-in, a world with history, and the presence of numerous characters brings that to life.

Twenty-four live action films in four years, for an average of one movie every other month. Yet somehow only one was an outright bomb.

A lot of people have rightly wondered why Supergirl is the second in the DCU’s rollout instead of Batman or Wonder Woman. Some claim Gunn rammed Supergirl and Clayface through ahead of the A-listers just because he loves C-listers so much. I decided to do a deep dive into how it came to be this way and I do not think this was entirely Gunn’s choosing. I'm not trying to be pro- or anti-Gunn here, just aiming to get to the truth of what happened. My detailed write-up below is based on reporting from trades, but I add some educated guesses to fill in the gaps.

In summary:

• When Gunn was sketching out the DCU slate in Nov–Dec 2022, plans remained in motion to release Matt Reeves’ Batman 2 and Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman 3. These were Abdy and De Luca’s projects that preceded Gunn and Safran’s hiring. That meant using Batman and Wonder Woman in the DCU was a little complicated.
• On top of that, The Flash and Aquaman were getting their own movies in 2023. Using them would be complicated as well.
• With Reeves deciding not to fold his Batman into the DCU, Gunn laid plans to follow Superman in 2025 with the DCU Batman in 2026/2027. However, Reeves’ Batman, which was supposed to come out in 2025, kept getting delayed, which meant DCU Batman also kept getting pushed back.
• By early 2024, it was becoming urgent to choose the summer 2026 release for DC. The plan was The Authority, an ensemble superhero team-up movie, but the script wasn't ready. The only viable script they had by then was Ana Noguiera’s Supergirl. Note, it wasn't the best – it was the ONLY script at hand. Likewise, Clayface was the only script they had for the fall 2026 slot. Despite what Gunn would later say, I believe Supergirl and Clayface were greenlit out of desperation, not because the scripts were incredible. (They may have been, but that wasn’t the primary reason.)

===

Planning the DCU (Nov 2022–Jan 2023)

James Gunn and Peter Safran became co-chairs of DC Studios in November 2022. Prior to their hiring, Adby and De Luca, co-chairs of Warner Bros. Pictures, were already developing Matt Reeves’ The Batman 2, Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman 3, and Todd Philip’s Joker 2, among others. Gunn and Safran were tasked with taming the chaotic DC properties going forward but those that were already in motion with Abdy and De Luca were off limits. It was only with Superman that Gunn was given sole control.

Consequently, when Gunn sat down with his writing team at the end of 2022 to map out the initial DCU slate, there was a lot of uncertainty over the future of Batman and Wonder Woman. Will Reeves and Jenkins fold in their versions into the DCU? If not, will the DCU’s versions clash with their movies? As for the other A-listers, The Flash and Aquaman had movies coming out in 2023 so it was too soon to use them again. There was Green Lantern, but Gunn and his writing team elected to make a Lanterns TV show instead.

Over the next three months, a few things got clearer. Reeves chose to keep his Batman separate from the DCU, so Gunn went about introducing his own Batman. Patty Jenkins left Wonder Woman 3, but it was still unclear whether the movie will press on with Gal Gadot attached. It would take around mid-2023 before Wonder Woman 3 was definitively canned.

In the meantime, on 31 January 2023 Gunn unveiled the “Gods and Monsters” slate. The film projects were Superman, The Authority, The Brave and the Bold, Supergirl, and Swamp Thing, plus The Batman Part II as an Elseworlds film. Only Superman and The Batman Part II were given release dates, but evidence suggests that the rest were announced in the order of intended release. With the planned two movies per year, the slate would have been something like this:

2025

July – Superman
October – The Batman Part II

2026

The Authority
The Brave and the Bold

2027

Supergirl
Swamp Thing

This slate arguably makes a lot more sense than the seemingly random Superman / Supergirl / Clayface that we’re getting. You have Batman debuting right after Superman. The Authority are unknown characters, but they're a superhero ensemble team that fit the big-budget blockbuster mold. And besides, no other Justice Leaguer was available to use. By 2027, perhaps the thinking was that general audiences are ready for a year of only C-list characters.

Writing delays (Feb–Dec 2023)

With the slate announced, Gunn and his team got to writing. Gunn finished the Superman script by April 2023. However, work on The Authority did not seem to be going well. Reeves was also taking longer to write his script than expected. Making all this worse was the Hollywood writers strike that started in May and lasted until September. This halted all work on scripts.

I think it was during the strike when it became clear that Gal Gadot was out and that Wonder Woman 3 was definitely not happening. This meant that Wonder Woman was now free for the DCU to use. However, Gunn did not seem to have acted on it. The planned Paradise Lost series may have been setting Wonder Woman up for a much later debut, but that’s just my guess. In any case, Gunn was deep into preproduction on Superman so he may have had his attention elsewhere.

By the time the strike ended, it was clear that The Batman Part II will have to be pushed from its 2025 release date to October 2026, which meant Brave and the Bold had to be delayed to 2027 or later. Meanwhile, work on the other projects continued. Mike Flanagan pitched a Clayface movie back in March, and this was now going into full swing. In November 2023, Ana Noguiera, who wrote a scrapped Supergirl movie for Sasha Calle’s character from The Flash, was brought back to script the Woman of Tomorrow adaptation.

Crunch time (2024)

By the time 2024 rolled around, it was becoming critical to lock in the 2026 summer film if production schedules were to be met. This would be paired with The Batman Part II, scheduled for October 2026. Brave and the Bold was obviously not an option. The Authority was going so badly that we would later find out that it was abandoned. James Mangold was MIA on Swamp Thing. I’m not sure how complete the Clayface script was, but it wasn’t a good candidate for a summer blockbuster. Out of all these, only the Supergirl script seems to have been moving, maybe because the comic it’s based on was already a solid story so the writing process was more straightforward. That May, Supergirl was confirmed to be the next DCU film with a release date of June 2026, with Craig Gillespie to direct.

Gunn would say that he was won over by Noguiera’s “incredible” script, which gives the impression that there were many potential scripts ready but Supergirl was just so good that it had to be next. But as I described above, I think it was actually the ONLY script they had. It was either Supergirl or nothing for summer 2026, and the latter may not have been an option to WB executives.

Gunn had a very busy 2024. He filmed Superman from February to July, then Peacemaker season 2 from August to November. This would have been the time that the Supergirl script was being refined and the overall direction of the movie being laid out. Maybe Gunn gave extensive notes, I don’t know, but what we do know is that he was VERY busy during this time. Make of that what you will.

By the time 2024 was drawing to a close, it was becoming clear once again that Reeves will not finish his script on time, so The Batman Part II was again delayed to October 2027. It might have been a good idea at this point to do Brave and the Bold BEFORE Reeves’ Batman, on October 2026, so that the DCU can finally have a Batman, but either the script wasn’t ready or they didn’t want to undercut Reeves. Instead, Gunn turned to the only other script he had ready, Clayface, and scheduled that for October 2026.

Some closing thoughts

Despite Gunn’s reputation as a very honest communicator for a studio head, he’s also pretty loose with the truth sometimes, which ends up shooting him in the foot. By hyping up Supergirl and Clayface, he’s downplayed the very real constraints he has faced in using A-listers like Batman, Wonder Woman, and the other Justice Leaguers, giving the impression that he deliberately sidelined them for his beloved C-listers. The truth is a little murkier. He inherited a mess at DC and had to adjust to plans he had no part in shaping.

This is not to absolve Gunn completely. With the benefit of hindsight, I think he should have pivoted in late 2023 on a Wonder Woman film once it was clear that Gadot was out. Or he should have elevated Green Lantern into a movie instead of a TV show. Or he should have brought out Brave and the Bold without waiting for Reeves. Instead, he stuck to the initial plan, continually trying to make The Authority work while moving forward with Supergirl. All the while he was stretched thin making Superman and Peacemaker.

On the bright side, I think 2026 was a fluke and the DCU for the next few years will focus on the heavy hitters. The only films we hear about now are Wonder Woman and Brave and the Bold. Gunn has had a lot of time to work with his team on these so I’m hoping they knock it out of the park. Any C-lister we hear about (Booster Gold, Gorilla Grodd, etc.) are for TV, which IMO is the perfect medium for those sorts of characters.