Skydance’s first big creative shake-up puts a $618.7 million Superman and a summer box-office bomb on the same ledger.
James Gunn rebuilt Superman. He will not get to finish rebuilding DC. Skydance Motion Picture Group said Monday that Gunn and Peter Safran are stepping down as co-chief executives of DC Studios after four years in charge, The Associated Press reported. Jeremy Latcham, a Marvel Studios veteran who helped launch the first wave of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, takes over as president and chief creative officer on Dec. 1.
The org chart says plenty. Latcham will report to Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein, the co-chairs of Skydance’s film group, rather than run DC as a stand-alone shop. Gunn and Safran, announced as co-heads in October 2022, had initially survived Skydance’s takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, which closed Oct. 6, according to the company’s third-quarter shareholder letter.
The scorecard is mixed. Superman grossed $618.7 million worldwide in 2025 against a net production budget of $225 million. That was solid, though short of the genre’s biggest hits. Supergirl was the problem, pulling in $126.4 million worldwide this summer on a budget reported at $170 million to $186 million. Then came Clayface, a stripped-down spin-off made for roughly $40 million, according to its production history, which AP says has grossed $109 million so far.
David Ellison, Skydance’s chairman and chief executive, thanked the pair for their “passion, contributions and commitment to this legendary brand.” Gunn and Safran said they were “excited to return to what drew us to this job in the first place.”
Gunn is not leaving the building. He is in postproduction on Man of Tomorrow, which DC Studios’ slate lists for July 9, 2027, and The Batman Part II is also coming. Latcham inherits a sequel he did not commission and a brand that still has to prove it can earn like Marvel, all inside a company that has promised investors at least $6 billion in run-rate cost savings within three years. His first slate will be built inside that math.
Sources
- The Associated Press via NBC New York – James Gunn and Peter Safran are out in another DC Studios shake-up
- Skydance (SEC filing) – Q3 2026 shareholder letter, Exhibit 99
- Wikipedia – DC Studios
- Wikipedia – Superman (2025 film)
- Wikipedia – Supergirl (2026 film)
- Wikipedia – Clayface (film)
Featured photo: James Gunn at the 2025 San Diego Comic-Con, by Gage Skidmore, licensed CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
Leave a Reply