It’s the biggest piece of DC news in years: James Gunn and Peter Safran are stepping down as the heads of DC Studios.
Skydance chairman and CEO David Ellison announced that Gunn and Safran, who were brought in four years ago to reboot DC’s film and TV output, will leave their co-CEO roles on 1 December. Taking over from that date is Jeremy Latcham, who joins as president and chief creative officer and will report to Skydance Motion Picture Group co-chairs Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein.
Latcham is a Marvel Studios veteran. He was among the company’s earliest employees and went on to become a senior vice president of development, widely described as a protégé of Kevin Feige. His credits include executive producing The Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, Avengers: Age of Ultron and Spider-Man: Homecoming.
The timing follows Skydance’s takeover of Warner Bros., which was finalised on 6 October and saw the departure of the studio’s film chiefs Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy. Ellison and his co-CEO Ynon Kreiz praised Gunn and Safran for launching “a new era for DC Studios” and expressed confidence in a smooth transition.
Gunn and Safran aren’t disappearing from DC entirely. They remain on as producers on The Batman Part II and The People vs. Gorilla Grodd, and Gunn is still directing Man of Tomorrow, the Superman sequel arriving next summer, with Safran producing. Gunn also said they’ve just begun work on another DC project that he’s writing.
Gunn shared his own statement on Instagram, thanking fans and describing the past four years as a dream come true, but one that was also “trying, to say the least.” He spoke of disliking the “at-times corporate nature of the job,” said he’d miss being the “co-caretaker” of these characters, and said he’s “incredibly relieved and excited to get back to pure filmmaking.”
Some will read that as spin, but to us it sounds earnest: a filmmaker admitting that running a studio simply wasn’t what he wanted to do all day. Reports have linked the change to the commercial struggles of this summer’s Supergirl, though those reasons haven’t been confirmed.
What this means for the wider slate, including the TV projects and the rest of the DCU timeline, is still to come into focus. We’ll bring you more as it develops.
