James Gunn and Peter Safran delivered a shocker on Monday when they announced they were stepping down as co-heads of the DC Studios , four years after taking charge. The move comes immediately after Warner Bros. Discovery, DC’s parent company, merged with Paramount to create Skydance, a new entity. In a social media post, James Gunn addressed his sudden departure and hinted at the reason.
The filmmaker spoke about the highs and lows of his time at the studio, focusing on creating Peacemaker and releasing Superman and Clayface. However, he also spoke about the lows, particularly the job’s corporate nature. “But what only the closest people to me have known over the past four years is my time at DC Studios has been trying, to say the least. I dislike the at-times corporate nature of the job (thanks to Peter for taking the brunt of that). I’m always a very hard worker, but as a filmmaker I would at least get to take short breaks to unwind, and I’ve stolen even that time from both myself and my loved ones over the past four years (Jenn, I love you and I’m sorry, and you don’t need to feel guilty for being the happiest of all people that I’m no longer doing this job). And the thing my ADHD hyperfocus has had the most difficulty with has been 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,” the filmmaker wrote. But Gunn also added that he is not immediately done with DC characters. “That’s not to say Peter and I are immediately done with DC or superheroes. And we’ve just been engaged on another DC project which I’m writing, and we’ll see where it goes after that. And, of course, the characters we set up will live on,” the filmmaker wrote.
James Gunn shared a long statement on his departure from DC Studios on Monday on his official Instagram account. He is directing Man of Tomorrow, the sequel to his Superman. We have Man of Tomorrow out this summer.
