DC cannot get it together. If that wasn’t the case before, it certainly is now, with DCU co-heads James Gunn and Peter Safran ousted from the company after just a few years of spooling up their grand new plan. They are replaced by Jeremy Latcham, and we begin all this again.

The problem is that of all DC’s options, there are effectively no good ones. While Gunn’s universe is either dismantled or drastically changing direction now, this is part of a long past, and likely future, of DC failing to assemble anything close to the MCU, despite dying to do so. Why is none of this working?

While the news was shocking and the timing poor, it does make some amount of sense that Gunn’s universe may not have panned out in the long term with too many detours and a leader who admits that he just plain does not like running an entire universe compared to making movies and TV himself.

Gunn was, in fact, way too focused on minor characters to create a universe that would hook audiences. That is sort of what he does, see Guardians of the Galaxy, but his first two actions were to retcon his Peacemaker show into being DCU canon, and then make the first official DCU projects an animated Creature Commandos series. It was pretty good, but I mean, Creature Commandos.

Skydance is correct in assessing that Gunn’s Superman movie, however well-cast, was not the big blockbuster opening needed for the new universe, making just $618 million. This is Superman we’re talking about, who may have fallen from his “biggest hero in the world” status (that’s now Spider-Man), but it was not a great sign of things to come. That thing to come was Supergirl , a failure of judgment by Gunn in making the film this early, in assigning a director unfamiliar with the genre, and in extolling the talent of a writer who couldn’t make it work. The same writer was on Wonder Woman even after Su p ergirl bombed.

However, keeping Gunn was the best of bad options. Because the others? Well.

Again, I don’t necessarily disagree with the idea that the DCU probably needed to lean into being a bit more accessible to all audiences, which is what Latcham coming on board seems to indicate. Four of the first six DCU projects were rated R/MA, and while many of them were good, you might be able to see the issue if you are trying to compete at any level with the MCU.

But where on earth is Latcham supposed to go from here? Two bad options here too now. One, you end Gunn’s DCU entirely and start over. No more David Corenswet Superman, no more Aaron Pierre Green Lantern, and so on. You search for a new Wonder Woman and Batman and just a few years later, a new Clark Kent and try to convince audiences that this time a reboot is going to work after they were told to be invested in ten years of Gunn’s plans.

The second option is to take over Gunn’s universe, keeping the big names and heroes intact, and keeping everything so far canon, even if we never see the likes of Peacemaker, Clayface or Hal Jordan again. That would at least avoid the “third reboot” problem, but using Gunn’s universe without Gunn seems like a separate recipe for disaster. Even though of the two, this is the better option.

The return of the king, his fans would call it. Five years ago, we saw the release of Zack Snyder’s cut of Justice Leagu e, something that WB granted him and his fans (a move I believe was mostly about driving HBO Max subscriptions). The DCEU was his baby, and for a time, it was certainly making money, with James Wan’s Aquaman , of all heroes, earning over a billion dollars for the hero’s solo film. The idea here is that Snyder would pick up where he left off with his journey toward a big Apocalypse conflict. Even Henry Cavill recently said he’d be ready to return to play Superman if asked.

But this would likely be a tangled mess. You’re returning to an old universe with an interim universe in the middle. You might lose major players (Ben Affleck has had negative things to say about his time as Batman), and the final stages of the Snyderverse, albeit without Snyder at that point, declined sharply in both box office and quality. Ironically, one of the all-time best DCEU movies, The Suicide Squad, was made by James Gunn. It also made just $168 million worldwide. Then The Rock tried to take it over right before the Gunn handover, making his Black Adam the center of the existing Snyderverse. Needless to say, that did not, and should not have, panned out.

There’s also the question of Zack Snyder and whether he would be trusted with the task at this point. His movies hardly blew critics away, and outside of his extremely die-hard fans, audiences weren’t exactly head over heels for his features. Keep in mind he only even directed Man of Steel, Batman v Superman , and Justice League (well, the second version, in full). Since then, he released the disastrous Rebel Moon movies for Netflix and most recently, his widely panned The Last Photograph, which may never see a full release at all. Is this a guy you want to put in charge of the DC universe again at this point?

This is more about using Matt Reeves’ The Batman universe than putting Reeves in charge of a DC universe. Reeves has struggled with personal family issues that most recently caused him to turn over filming of The Batman Part II to Steven Soderbergh, and I doubt it’s a role he even wants or is able to take on.

This would be a strange prospect on any level. If this universe becomes its own thing, which would include two Batman movies (with a current gap of six years after many delays) and The Penguin, you would still have to fill up the roster all over again, which is the identical Latcham problem.

There is now an idea that perhaps with Gunn gone, who usually dismissed the concept, that Reeves’ universe could merge with the DCU. Never mind that the tone couldn’t be further apart outside of select instances like Clayface , the only real problem you’ve solved there is that you have a Batman now, and again, it’s the second Latcham issue where you’d still have to carry forward Gunn’s old universe. Just…with a Batman ready to go, if Robert Pattinson even wants to keep playing the role. He’s now 40 after being cast as a “young Batman" initially, and if a third movie ever exists, who knows how close to 50 he might be then.

Just…awful options here, and I don’t think any of them fully work. I still believe that keeping Gunn on was the best of a bad situation. He may have realized that yes, he needed to start focusing on the big guns (no pun intended), and it really did seem like he was starting to get there. The major projects to come were supposedly Wonder Woman , and then reports of Gunn working on either a third Superman movie to complete a planned trilogy, or possibly him taking on Batman next. Put someone else in the world-managing role (Safran?), but let him do his thing and keep his universe going. But that’s not what’s happening, and we are either staring at a Latcham reboot or a hacked-up version of Gunn’s DCU, led by Latcham. What a mess.

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