Behind Gunn and Safran's DC exit: costly bets on Supergirl and Clayface

James Gunn and Peter Safran lost control of DC Studios after a four-year run that, by Variety's account, cost too much and connected too rarely. The trade's post-mortem on the shake-up, built largely on unnamed insiders, describes a leadership team that spent heavily on projects audiences never fully embraced. When Paramount Skydance took over Warner Bros. Discovery, that left the pair with little leverage.

Their ouster was revealed Monday, and Marvel Studios alum Jeremy Latcham takes over as DC Studios' president and chief creative officer. Gunn and Safran aren't leaving DC entirely. Gunn is still directing "Man of Tomorrow" for release next summer, and the pair will produce the 2027 series "The People v. Gorilla Grodd" and another season of "Creature Commandos." They will do that work without the authority they held before.

The headline numbers tell a story of diminishing returns. The harder question is what Latcham does with a slate built for a 10-year plan that now has no architects.

Supergirl, Clayface and a cost problem

Gunn's "Superman," with David Corenswet in the title role, was the duo's first major release as studio chiefs. It grossed $618 million worldwide against a $225 million budget. Three days into that film's run, then-WBD CEO David Zaslav hailed the "bold 10-year plan" and declared that "the momentum is real."

The momentum faded quickly. This July's "Supergirl" took in $126 million globally on a $170 million budget, a result Variety labeled a flop and a money-loser. October's "Clayface" earned $109 million against a $44 million budget. That is a healthier ratio on paper, but Variety's sources say the body-horror film won't reach break-even until the studio counts downstream revenue.

Insiders told Variety they questioned the decision to build around lesser-known figures, including Superman's cousin Kara Zor-El and a Batman villain, instead of the marquee names. One studio insider offered a blunter verdict: "Higher budgets don't equal quality storytelling."

That criticism has some merit, but it oversimplifies. A $44 million "Clayface" was exactly the kind of modestly priced experiment a franchise should be able to absorb. The bigger misstep looks like sequencing. Following a solid but unspectacular "Superman" with a $170 million bet on a secondary character asked audiences to invest in an interconnected universe before the first film had built that loyalty. Meanwhile, Marvel's "Spider-Man: Brand New Day" became the third-biggest movie in history with $2.5 billion this July, and "Avengers: Doomsday" arrives in December. That is a lopsided comparison, but it shows audiences will still turn out for heroes they already know.

Television offers a more mixed picture. DC's biggest small-screen success, Colin Farrell's "The Penguin," was greenlit before Gunn and Safran arrived. The second season of Gunn's "Peacemaker" didn't match the buzz of the first. "Lanterns," the duo's first live-action series, averaged 19 million viewers per episode worldwide heading into its finale, yet it still lacks a second-season order. A company insider read that as a sign the show wasn't breaking through: "People cannot wait to make another season of a hit show."

Nineteen million viewers an episode is not a failure by most streaming standards. If that audience can't secure a renewal, the problem probably lies in what the show cost rather than whether anyone watched. The same logic appears to have doomed the people who commissioned it.

A reorganization that read as a demotion

Under Zaslav, Gunn and Safran reported directly to the CEO, not to film co-chairs Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy. Variety reports the duo had been assured they would be part of David Ellison's leadership team after the acquisition closed in October. But Ellison and co-CEO Ynon Kreiz planned to have them report to Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein, the new heads of the Skydance Motion Picture Group. The trade characterized that shift as a demotion, and it would have pushed DC's creative chiefs a rung further from the top.

The split extends a long pattern of turnover. Geoff Johns and Jon Berg ran DC's film efforts, then Walter Hamada. Gunn and Safran were hired in 2022 after the previous continuity ended with disappointments such as "The Flash" and "Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom."

The pairing always mixed two different skill sets. Safran came from New Line's "Conjuring" franchise and had produced "Shazam!" and "Aquaman," so budgets and balance sheets were familiar ground. Gunn, best known for Marvel's "Guardians of the Galaxy" films, had to run a studio while directing its flagship movies. After his exit, he acknowledged on X how hard it was dividing his time between "projects I'm incredibly passionate about and the ones I'm not so much."

Zaslav's farewell note draws a backlash

Zaslav, who led the sale process and bidding contest that ended with Paramount Skydance buying WBD, left a warm comment on Gunn's Instagram farewell. He called Gunn an extraordinary leader and said his "storytelling and creative vision for DC was magical," adding that he was eager for audiences to see "Man of Tomorrow." Gunn liked the comment.

Many of the replies were hostile. Several commenters blamed Zaslav for the sale that set the shake-up in motion. One wrote simply, "This is your fault," and another argued he had pushed to sell during the studio's most profitable year. One user went the other way, thanking Zaslav for putting Gunn and Safran in charge in the first place. A Zaslav representative did not immediately respond to TheWrap's request for comment.

The anger is aimed at a single executive, but the commenters have a point about the mechanics. Gunn and Safran's leverage depended on a direct line to the top, and the sale removed it.

The trouble with 'Man of Tomorrow'

The most immediate casualty may be Gunn's own film. "Man of Tomorrow" brings back Corenswet's Superman and Nicholas Hoult's Lex Luthor. IGN's Jim Vejvoda pointed out that it is now in the same position "The Flash" occupied in 2022. That film was in post-production under one regime and released by the next, and it ended up closing out a continuity that had already been abandoned. He noted that both films assemble heroes, Supergirl among them, against a cosmic threat led by a classic Superman foe, with Brainiac making his live-action film debut this time. Until Latcham says otherwise, Vejvoda argued, fans have little reason to assume the film leads anywhere.

That is the real risk here. A blockbuster that audiences suspect is a dead end has a harder time selling tickets, and "The Flash" showed how much that suspicion can cost. Latcham could limit the damage by stating early whether Corenswet's Superman is part of his plans. Silence would likely do more harm than any announcement.

Beyond Gunn's film, the pipeline is thin. "The Batman: Part II" is due in 2028, six years after Robert Pattinson's first outing. The long-teased "Wonder Woman" reboot never got moving. Gunn has hinted that he is writing another DC project, but whether it survives is now Latcham's call.

Internally, according to Variety, there's hope the new chief will return DC to fundamentals. One source described him as a fan at heart: "Jeremy is the kind of guy who would go to Comic-Con to get an autograph from someone." Enthusiasm is a good start. The job will require him to put DC's best-known heroes on screen at budgets the new owners can live with, something the last three regimes didn't manage.