James Gunn Will Remain in Charge of DC Studios

The final legal hurdles have been cleared and in a matter of months, Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount Skydance will be no more, replaced by a combined corporation known simply as Skydance.

Smooshing two film studios into one will result in massive changes in Hollywood; we only know of a few of them for sure at this point. The heads of Paramount, Josh Greenstein and Dana Goldberg, look to oversee the combined film production at both Paramount and Warner Bros., meaning the current heads of Warners, Micael De Luca and Pam Abdy will likely be in search of new jobs elsewhere.

But two of De Luca and Abdy’s key lieutenants are staying — as the co-CEOs of DC Studios, James Gunn and Peter Safran, are set to stay on and continue overseeing DC movies and shows for the new Skydance regime.

Earlier today, Gunn posted a promotional video hyping the new soon-to-be-merged Skydance company and all of its brands. Frankly, it’s an alarming amount of film companies, TV networks, and intellectual property. It feels like half of Hollywood when it’s laid out this way.

Gunn’s video included the caption: “What once was the peak, is now just the beginning.”

According to Deadline, Gunn and Safran had a meeting with Skydance overseer David Ellison and “it went well.”

Even if you wanted to dismiss Gunn and Safran, even if you felt they had done a poor job relaunching DC’s combined fictional universe in the last few years, now would probably be a bad time to do it. Gunn directed the first film in the current DC Universe, Superman, and he’s in production now on its sequel, Man of Tomorrow. You could dump him as an executive, but that would just make releasing the sequel, Man of Tomorrow, infinitely more difficult.

The next DC Studios movie, Clayface, opens in theaters on October 23. Gunn’s Man of Tomorrow follows on July 9, 2027.