5 Possible Reasons Behind James Gunn And Peter Safran’s DC Studios Exit

The hierarchy of power in the DC Universe is about to change. The Paramount/Warner Bros. Discovery merger was recently made official, with a new mega-corporation, Skydance, emerging on the other side. As a result, major changes are being made at all of the companies under the corporation’s umbrella, and those changes have come for DC Studios.

In a surprise move, James Gunn and Peter Safran are exiting as co-heads of DC Studios, with former Marvel exec Jeremy Latcham taking over. What this means for the future of the DC Universe that Gunn and Safran have been building together since 2022 remains to be seen, but this is one of the bigger shake-ups in the realm of superheroes and comic book happenings in a long time.

For now, we have more questions than answers, and the biggest question on everyone’s minds right now is what, exactly, prompted the divorce between Gunn, Safran, and DC Studios. While we don’t have a definitive answer yet, there are some strong possible reasons for the man behind Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” trilogy and his trusted producing pal to exit the company.

We’re going to look at some of those reasons as we try to make sense of what just happened and what might come next. Let’s get into it.

In early 2023, when James Gunn announced the first chapter of the new DC Universe and called it “Gods and Monsters,” it was clear the idea was for DC Studios to focus on characters other than Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman. Yes, Gunn was going to direct “Superman,” but projects like “Swamp Thing” and “The Authority” were also in the mix. Many of the projects have yet to come to fruition, but others, such as “Clayface,” have. They’ve delivered mixed results.

Gunn and Safran weren’t focusing all that much on A-list DC characters at the time. A new Batman is due to debut in “The Brave and the Bold,” but that movie doesn’t even have a release date, and Gunn has confirmed that Robert Pattinson’s Batman won’t join the new DCU. It admittedly complicates matters with “The Batman Part II” now in production. All the same, the new DCU absolutely needs a Batman. It needs a Wonder Woman. It needs A-listers.

Skydance is now a mega-corporation that is tens of billions of dollars in debt. On paper, it might be good to have a movie like “Clayface” make well over $100 million on a $44 million budget. But that’s relatively small potatoes compared to what a “Batman” movie can make. Skydance wants to focus more on those A-list characters. Right or wrong, the company is likely eager to get a new Wonder Woman on screen and a new Batman cast to exist alongside David Corenswet’s Superman.

There may well be room for movies like “Swamp Thing” or “The Authority,” but not before the A-listers get sorted out. Again, this is speculative, but since IP is still king in Hollywood, there’s good reason to believe the brass is looking at DC with more urgency in this regard.

We can have creative discussions all day, and undoubtedly, people will be sharing a lot of opinions on what James Gunn and Peter Safran have produced during their time as the heads of DC Studios. However, at the end of the day, Hollywood is a business, and from a business perspective, the box office returns just haven’t been good enough. In particular, “Supergirl” is a glaring issue that needed to be addressed.

Gunn’s “Superman” was the biggest comic book movie of 2025 at the box office with $618 million, but that was still less than Zack Snyder’s “Man of Steel” ($670 million) did 13 years earlier, unadjusted for inflation. It was a promising enough start, but not a resoundingly great one. Superhero movies are no longer automatically successful in theaters like they were in the 2010s, which certainly doesn’t make things any easier. All the same, results are not just expected, but needed to justify the sky-high budgets for these blockbusters.

“Supergirl” flopped at the box office earlier this year, taking in just $126 million worldwide on a $170 million budget against mixed reviews. While Supergirl isn’t quite an A-list character, she’s a heck of a lot bigger than Clayface or Peacemaker. The fact that the movie bombed in such high-profile fashion was not a good look for DC Studios. Ultimately, it reflects back on Gunn and Safran, even though Craig Gillespie was in the director’s chair.

In truth, DC is in the midst of one of the biggest box office bad streaks ever. The misses far outweigh the hits. Not all of that can be placed on Gunn and Safran, but something needs to change. Relatively modest hits like “Clayface” aren’t going to cut it forever.

James Gunn worked as a smaller filmmaker for years before he ascended to Hollywood’s A-list. When “Guardians of the Galaxy” became Marvel’s most unlikely box office smash hit, everything changed. That eventually led to him becoming a studio head, but occupying an executive suite was never his ambition. He wanted to be a director. Put simply, it sounds very much like Gunn didn’t want to be a Hollywood executive anymore.

After the news about his exit broke, Gunn explained his departure as DC Studios’ co-head and his statement made it seem like the job was very taxing on his personal life, as well as his creative life. “DC Studios has been trying, to say the least,” he said. “I dislike the at-times corporate nature of the job.”

Gunn also noted that he had a tough time “dividing my time between projects I’m incredibly passionate about and the ones I’m not so much and all the things I have to do as a studio head.”

Not to say that there weren’t other factors involved, but if we take Gunn at his word, the last four years have been pretty difficult for him. He wasn’t just making giant movies like “Superman” and next year’s “Man of Tomorrow,” but he’s been creatively managing all of the output at DC Studios. It’s not terribly hard to see why he might want to go back to just being a writer and director.

There’s no telling what has been going on behind closed doors at Skydance ever since the merger went through. CEO David Ellison has his own ideas of how he wants the company, and its various divisions, to run. Ellison isn’t the guy who launched DC Studios when James Gunn and Peter Safran’s new division started at Warner Bros. It’s entirely possible there was a bit of a culture clash.

It’s certainly interesting to note that Both Gunn and Safran were announced as part of the executive structure at Skydance after the Warner Bros./Paramount merger was made official. That was just a few weeks ago. Would Ellison have announced them as part of the new company if the plan was to move on and have Jeremy Latcham take over? It’s hard to imagine. That implies that something may have happened in recent weeks that prompted the exit.

What could that be? There are a lot of moving parts. Ellison, as well as his new film chiefs Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein, undoubtedly had their own ideas about how to handle things at DC Studios. If Gunn and/or Safran bumped up against them in ways they didn’t with the previous regime, it’s not hard to imagine the camel’s back breaking under the weight of one too many straws.

Without aimlessly speculating as to what they all could have disagreed about, it seems probable that if all sides got along and shared a vision for the future, they could have figured something out.

DC Studios was under the Warner Bros. umbrella, but it seemed like James Gunn and Peter Safran were granted a great deal of creative freedom to shape this new DC Universe as they saw fit. There’s virtually no question that Skydance, David Ellison, and the rest of the new brass at the studio have their own ideas about what to do with the treasure trove of IP that is the DC Comics library. It’s not hard to surmise that Skydance’s ideas didn’t align with Gunn and Safran’s intended plans.

James Gunn’s DC Universe plans shifted after Warner Bros.’ initial announcement, but that never meant that Gunn and Safran lost control of the ship. They were steering. They were making sure things were lining up for eventual, future plans. Those plans haven’t fully revealed themselves (and we may never know the full scope of what they wanted to do), but it’s clear there was an ultimate plan in place.

If Skydance has different ideas (and it feels safe to assume they do), that would complicate matters. If Gunn and Safran spent years building out this slate only to have to bend to what the new leadership wants, that would be frustrating. Without putting words in anyone’s mouth, it could even be taken as an insult.

Again, I’m not here to recklessly speculate, but these two guys had a vision that Warner Bros. bought into. If Skydance doesn’t share that vision, or something close to it, Gunn and Safran making their way to the exit door makes a lot of sense.