Momentum has been slowly building for well over a year now for James Gunn and Peter Safran’s new DC Universe. The multimedia, DC Comics-inspired franchise hasn’t officially begun, though. That long-awaited moment will come when the new Gunn-created animated Suicide Squad spin-off TV series, Creature Commandos, premieres December 5 on Max. Nonetheless, Gunn is already not only receiving criticisms from some comic book readers and superhero fans, but also pushing back against certain claims.
The DC Studios co-CEO did that very thing when one fan recently argued on Threads that Gunn’s decision to greenlight projects about “niche” characters like Sgt. Rock and Swamp Thing makes it seem like he’s only “making the DCU for hardcore comic book readers and not for the general audience.” In response, Gunn wrote, “Don’t put Swamp Thing in the corner. That’s a project in development we’ve actually announced, and he’s an incredibly well known character with not only some of the greatest comics of all time but a successful film series and his own TV show, something that could be said of only a very small handful of DC characters.”
In the same comment, Gunn also defended his decision to skip Batman and Superman’s origin stories in the DCU, succinctly explaining, “I’m not telling Batman and Superman’s origin stories again because everyone knows them.”
As a filmmaker, Gunn has experience bringing obscure comic book characters into the mainstream scene. He did so in 2014 when he directed Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy. There are, additionally, multiple projects in development at DC Studios right now that promise to focus on lesser known comic book characters, including Creature Commandos, The Authority, Booster Gold, and the recently reported, Luca Guadagnino-directed and Daniel Craig-starring Sgt. Rock.
That said, there are also just as many, if not more, TV and film projects in the works at DC Studios right now that are centered around characters who are anything but niche and obscure, like Superman, Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, The Brave and the Bold, Swamp Thing, and Lanterns. Movies about the Teen Titans and fan-favorite Batman villains Bane and Deathstroke are also reportedly in development.
Taking all that into account, it doesn’t seem like Gunn and Safran are planning on relying too much on “niche” characters in the DC Universe so much as they’re trying to fill the franchise out with a healthy mix of both well-known and lesser known heroes and villains. Only time will tell whether or not their efforts to do so actually pay off, but it’s a hard strategy to criticize, especially before anyone has even seen one of the DCU’s forthcoming shows or movies.