James Gunn and Peter Safran are stepping down as the heads of DC Studios on December 1, four years into the job and just over a month after Skydance kept them in place. Former Marvel executive Jeremy Latcham takes over as president and chief creative officer, Skydance announced on Monday.
Watch the short YouTubeGunn isn’t finished with DC. He and Safran will keep producing, and he is writing another DC project. He was also one of the people meeting with DC’s game studios, and nothing announced so far says who does that now.
Jeremy Latcham takes over DC Studios on December 1
Latcham will lead DC’s film, television and animation slate, reporting to Skydance CEO David Ellison and co-CEO Ynon Kreiz. He joined Marvel in 2004, rose to senior vice president of production and development, and worked on the first two Iron Man films, the first two Avengers films and Spider-Man: Homecoming. He was also an executive producer on Gunn’s first Guardians of the Galaxy.
Since leaving Marvel he has produced Bad Times at the El Royale and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, so DC’s new boss has already taken a game to the big screen. He is also producing a Naruto film.
Latcham called DC’s characters “among the most iconic in American popular culture.” Ellison and Kreiz said they are “grateful for their passion, contributions and commitment to this legendary brand” of Gunn and Safran, and promised a smooth handover.
Gunn calls running DC Studios “trying, to say the least”
Gunn said goodbye in a long post on Threads that was unusually frank for an executive exit. He wrote that the job had been “trying, to say the least,” and that he disliked “the at-times corporate nature of the job,” thanking Safran for taking the brunt of it. He said the role ate into his time with his family, and that his ADHD hyperfocus made it hard to split his attention across so many projects.
He doesn’t sound bitter about it. “I didn’t know if I wanted this job when it was offered to me, but I just couldn’t pass up the unique opportunity,” he wrote, adding, “I’m glad I took the job.” He says he is now “incredibly relieved and excited to get back to pure filmmaking.”
Ellison reportedly told the pair to keep going weeks before the exit
The timing is the strange part. Deadline reported on October 2 that Gunn and Safran would stay in charge once Paramount’s takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery closed, and the deal closed on October 6. The Hollywood Reporter says sources told it the pair presented their long-term plan to Ellison only weeks ago, and that he told them to keep going. In October, Gunn told the same outlet, “David knows everything.”
The official explanation is that both men are returning to full-time creative work. Nobody has said on the record whether the decision was theirs or Skydance’s.
The recent box office is mixed, though no one involved has tied it to the change. Superman made about $618.7 million worldwide in 2025. Supergirl finished around $125.8 million on a reported budget of about $170 million, the lowest total for a DC film since 2004’s Catwoman. Clayface opened to $43 million worldwide last month and has since passed $100 million on a reported budget of $30 million to $44 million.
Man of Tomorrow is still set for July 9, 2027, and Gunn is writing more DC
Gunn will finish Man of Tomorrow, the Superman sequel he says has been “the best filmmaking experience of my life.” He remains involved in the HBO series The People v. Gorilla Grodd, and he and Safran stay attached as producers on The Batman Part II. He hasn’t said what the new DC project he’s writing is.
He also wrote that “the characters we set up will live on,” which suggests the current DC universe isn’t about to be wiped clean. Latcham hasn’t addressed that yet, so it isn’t a promise.
Gunn and Safran sat in on DC’s game plans, and that seat is now open
For players, this is the part to watch. Gunn and Safran didn’t only run the films. “James and I sit with the guys that run the studios under JB whether it’s NetherRealm or Rocksteady,” Safran said in February 2025, referring to then-Warner Bros. games chief JB Perrette. Gunn added, “We see designs for the projects in their very earliest stages.”
By August 2025 Gunn was saying there were “some bigger things” in “early stages of planning,” including “one thing in particular I’m excited about, but it does take time.” He also said “there’s been some changes in Warner Bros. Games, and so we’re dealing with new people,” after a year in which Warner closed Monolith, Player First Games and WB San Diego and cancelled Monolith’s Wonder Woman game.
Those plans never became an announced game. Latcham’s stated remit is film, television and animation, and the statements released on Monday don’t mention games at all.
DC’s games now sit under Tony Driscoll in a merged Skydance division
The game studios changed hands too. Skydance is folding Warner Bros. Games and Paramount Games Studio into one group led by Tony Driscoll, covering Rocksteady, NetherRealm, TT Games and WB Games Montreal. His memo to staff name-checked the range as running “from ‘Batman’ to ‘SpongeBob.’” The company’s leadership has also warned staff across the merged business to expect “difficult decisions that affect our workforce.”
DC’s most recent big game, LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, came from TT Games in May with help from Rocksteady. Rocksteady’s last full release was 2024’s Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, and while a new single-player Batman game from the studio has been reported, neither Rocksteady nor Skydance has announced one. Skydance also hasn’t said whether Latcham’s team will have any say over it.
