James Gunn & Peter Safran To Stay At DC Studios After Paramount-Warner Bros Merger

James Gunn and Peter Safran, the bosses of Warner Bros’ owned label DC Studios, will continue to lead the film, TV, comic book production hub and do what they do best.

We hear the duo had a meeting with new Skydance co-CEO David Ellison about their future and it went well. Per this morning’s news, all film units, Paramount and Warner Bros, are to report into Paramount Pictures co-chairs Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein. The future of Warner Bros motion picture chairs Michel De Luca and Pamela Abdy remains up in the air at the new relabeled Skydance entertainment conglomerate; the duo still in need of chatting with Ellison.

Gunn has been shooting the Superman sequel, Man of Tomorrow, set for release on July 9, 2027. The label’s Clayface about Batman antagonist is their first lower budget genre movie opening on Oct. 23. Warner Bros’ second highest grossing movie last year was Gunn’s Superman with more than $618M at the global box office. Also in production at DC is Matt Reeves’ sequel The Batman Part II set for Feb. 18, 2028.

The DC HBO Max series Lanterns has been a ratings success.

Safran and Gunn were appointed to lead DC Studios back in October 2022 in a new label strategy orchestrated by WBD CEO David Zaslav to mimic Disney’s production label hub structure of Marvel Studios, Lucasfilm, Pixar, etc. with myriad production heads. It was arguably the first time (unless we count Charlie Chaplin, etc.) that a filmmaker, Gunn, did double duty as a studio executive. Gunn already had a hot streak at Warners/New Line with multi-billion grossing The Conjuring franchise and also producing other DC movies such as Shazam and Aquaman franchise titles.

This is all according to sources this AM. Paramount and DC couldn’t be reached for comment.

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