James Gunn and Peter Safran Felt Secure at DC Until Skydance’s Surprise Visit Changed Everything

Few Hollywood stories have moved as quickly as James Gunn and Peter Safran’s DC exit. Only weeks ago, the duo looked like they had secured their future after a corporate takeover that reshaped Warner Bros. from top to bottom.

Warner Bros. Discovery hired Gunn and Safran in late 2022 to run the newly formed DC Studios, with both reporting directly to company chief David Zaslav. In early October, trade reports said Skydance boss David Ellison had asked them to stay on after a meeting that went well, which made the superhero universe they were building feel safe.

That sense of security lasted barely a month. On Monday, Skydance Motion Picture Group announced that the pair are stepping down as co-chief executives after 4 years in charge, with the changeover taking effect on Dec. 1.

Replacing them is Jeremy Latcham, a longtime Marvel Studios executive who worked on the early wave of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, including ‘Iron Man’ and ‘The Avengers’. He also worked with Gunn and Safran on ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’, so the new boss is no stranger to the people he is replacing.

Latcham will serve as president and chief creative officer of DC Studios, overseeing film, television and animation, along with production, talent and strategy. Crucially, he will report to Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein, the co-chairs of Skydance Motion Picture Group, whereas Gunn and Safran answered directly to Warner Bros. leadership.

The most revealing details come from The Hollywood Reporter, which says Gunn and Safran were already plotting a third ‘Superman’ movie when Ellison and fellow Skydance co-CEO Ynon Kreiz arrived at their offices on the Warner Bros. lot on Friday, Nov. 6. According to sources, the DC heads were told that despite earlier assurances, the plan had changed and they were out.

Sources also pointed to several points of tension with Goldberg and Greenstein. One was the reporting structure itself, since Gunn and Safran had been used to answering to Warner Bros. rather than a film division. Another was the claim that the DC heads were slow to share plans, slate details and footage with the Skydance movie chiefs.

The report adds that Ellison never wanted DC to report directly to him and had little patience for studio politics, such as posturing between division heads. It also says Gunn and Safran will keep direct links to the studio, though with far less control than before.

Publicly, Skydance struck a warm tone. Ellison thanked the pair for launching a new era for DC Studios and praised their passion, contributions and commitment to the brand. Goldberg and Greenstein, for their part, said Latcham brings deep respect for DC and its fans.

Gunn used Instagram to say that he is writing one more secret DC movie, and that the characters he and Safran set up will live on beyond them. Reading between the lines, he appears eager to return to writing and directing rather than running a studio.

The exit does not mean the DC pipeline disappears overnight. Gunn is in postproduction on ‘Man of Tomorrow’, the follow-up to ‘Superman’, and the slate still includes ‘The People v. Gorilla Grodd’ and ‘The Batman: Part II’. That means Gunn and Safran’s fingerprints will remain on DC for a good while.

Their run was not without bumps, though. ‘Supergirl’ flopped earlier this year, a major setback for the second release under their leadership, while ‘Clayface’ blended superhero storytelling with horror in the kind of genre gamble that defined their approach. Whether Latcham keeps that idiosyncratic spirit or steers DC toward a more Marvel-style model is now the big question.

DC has had no shortage of leadership shake-ups, and this one lands at an especially delicate moment. Fans who embraced a unified creative vision now have to wait and see how much of it survives under a new chief and a new corporate structure.

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