Under The Gunn: New DC Head Responds To ‘Wonder Woman’ Director Patty Jenkins Departure, Future of Franchises
James Gunn has been the co-head of DC Studios under Warner Bros. Discovery for just one month, but what a month it’s been.
Yesterday, the DC world was rocked by the news that Patty Jenkins, the director of the first two Wonder Woman movies, would not be helming a third Amazonian adventure. Although initial reports indicated that it was the studio that nixed a third outing, Deadline reports that the brass (not just Gunn and the other co-head Peter Safran) didn’t like the script treatment Jenkins offered, citing concerns about character arcs and the same structural issues that affected Wonder Woman 1984. Jenkins reportedly declined an offer to redo it, and removed herself from the project.
Warner Bros. Discovery, apparently aware of the bad optics behind canning both the Batgirl movie and Wonder Woman 3 in the same year, is willing to make a third WW movie, according to Deadline, but the loss of Jenkins raises the question of whether Gal Gadot would return. (Gadot tweeted on Tuesday that she “[can’t] wait to share the next chapter with you.”)
Gunn responded to the Jenkins story, as well as news that Henry Cavill may or may not reprise Superman (as well as other possible turnover of DC stars and franchises) with a tweet referencing a Hollywood Reporter story that spoke of a “messy transition period,” by saying that “Some of it is true, some of it is half-true, some of it is not true, & some of it we haven’t decided yet whether it’s true or not.”
Gunn went on to tweet that “Although this first month at DC has been fruitful, building the next ten years of story takes time & we’re still just beginning. Peter & I chose to helm DC Studios knowing we were coming into a fractious environment, both in the stories being told & in the audience itself & there would be an unavoidable transitional period as we moved into telling a cohesive story across film, TV, animation, and gaming. But, in the end, the drawbacks of that transitional period were dwarfed by the creative possibilities & the opportunity to build upon what has worked in DC so far & to help rectify what has not.”
Most of the questions floating around now, among not just fans but at DC Studios, are about how much of the existing framework of DCEU stories will stay in play as Gunn and Safran try to build a shared universe (ala the MCU) over the next ten years.
Gunn stated his commitment today “to build upon what has worked in DC so far & to help rectify what has not…We know we are not going to make every single person happy every step of the way, but we can promise everything we do is done in the service of the STORY & in the service of the DC CHARACTERS we know you cherish and we have cherished our whole lives.”