Supergirl has just barely crawled past $100 million at the global box office, less than a sixth of what its predecessor Superman did. It is possibly going to end on par with some of the worst DCU disasters like Blue Beetle and well, James Gunn’s own Suicide Squad movie.
There has been a post-mortem about Supergirl which describes clashes between director Craig Gillespie and DC Studios head Gunn, warring cuts of the film that ultimately went with the studio’s version. But at that point, nothing was going to double the returns of Supergirl, and even if so, that still would have been a disappointing total.
Many are now questioning Gunn’s ability to lead this DC universe into the future as its grand architect, and to some degree, understandably so. But the current state of WB and DC is likely to be harmed more by booting Gunn out (his contract is reportedly up in the next year or two) and replacing him.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – AUGUST 02: James Gunn attends the Warner Bros. premiere of “The Suicide Squad” at Regency Village Theatre on August 02, 2021 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images)
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Starting over, again, would be a nightmare. Either you have to do a third universe reboot in the last five years, or you have to have someone else working within the first few years of Gunn’s setup, which I imagine could be a sort of Disney New Star Wars Trilogy situation of disjointed cooks.
Gunn has proven to be very good at a few things, namely producing high-quality superhero content himself, be it animated series or live-action films as a director or writer, and I would argue casting, his choices for the Superman cast being spot on, creating an iconic Peacemaker team and Milly Alcock as Supergirl was not on the top ten list of that movie’s problems.
The next slated projects do not seem like bad ideas. Lanterns, again, seems well-cast, and has the potential to be a solid introduction to that important corner of the universe. Clayface has good early reception and a horror legend on board in Mike Flanagan. After that, the next mainline movie is Gunn’s own Man of Tomorrow, which, like all of his other superhero projects, is likely to be good.
I think Gunn is smart enough to learn lessons from what’s been happening, perhaps understanding that the current idea of introducing a number of sub-characters before building out the mainstream ones, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, etc, is not a recipe for a solid foundation. This could be turned around in the next few years, potentially (at least he started with Superman), provided he can loosen his grip on his beloved quirky side-character collection. It’s also about choice, not quality. Gunn could have directed Supergirl himself, and I don’t think it would have done all that much better, even if it was a better film. It was not well positioned to succeed as the second film in this universe. I saw it compared it to the idea that after Iron Man was released in the MCU, the next movie would be Ironheart.
There may have to be a decision made, however, about Gunn both making his own films, essentially non-stop at this point, and also trying to run the studio and make these overarching plans and hiring decisions and edits himself (with Peter Safran supporting, but still). This is very much unlike the more detached Kevin Feige, who is the MCU mastermind but is not directing or writing anything himself. Not to say the MCU hasn’t had its dramatic down periods, but even after all these years, it’s about to put out two billion-dollar grossing movies this year alone with Spider-Man: Brand New Day and Avengers: Doomsday.
The DCU is starting off rough, but pulling Gunn before he has a chance to figure this out would cause more harm than good at this point. And fan-pushed ideas like having the Matt Reeves Batverse simply take over are not viable. It’s certainly not the best situation, but it’s too early for moves this potentially drastic.
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