Gossip, rumor, melodrama, and more. DC Studios, formerly DC Films, did not have a good 2022. First, as Warner Bros. merged into Warner Bros. Discovery, there was a ton of disruption. The nearly complete “Batgirl” film was scrapped in August, signaling great change coming ahead, and a few months later, James Gunn and Peter Safran were then hired as the new co-executives of DC Films, and change became drastic. Gunn and Safran were faced with a lot of hard choices, the two most prominent were essentially kicking Henry Cavill and Dwayne Johnson to the curb, telling the former he would no longer play Superman—after announcing his return two months prior—and telling the later his ambitious plan for more “Black Adam” films had been scrapped. Essentially, both actors will no longer play those heroes, though Johnson seems to be hoping for a return one day.
READ MORE: ‘Black Adam 2’ Not Moving Forward As The DC Hierarchy Of Power Doesn’t Change
Regardless, the late fall of 2022 was nuts, and the entire fiasco ended up being one of the biggest entertainment news stories of the year. Patty Jenkins’ “Wonder Woman 3” proposal was scrapped, and she’s no longer directing it (the fate of Gal Gadot remains unclear), and it seemed like a total, and complete reboot of the DC Universe was in the cards (Jason Momoa maybe even moving to a different character?). We even recorded an emergency podcast to try and make sense of it all.
And now, in a behind-the-scenes look piece from Variety, more details are emerging on what happened. Essentially, it’s a piece about Dwayne Johnson and how his bid for DC supremacy backfired, but there are lots of little details within.
The biggest of them all might be that Warner Bros. film chief Toby Emmerich made the call in 2018 to replace Cavill and find another actor to become Superman. Obviously, that did not happen, and Cavill returned briefly in the post-credit scene of “Black Adam,” but it’s an interesting revelation to hear.
The second detail: Gunn and Safran’s three-year interconnected vision for the cinematic universe won’t include Cavill’s Superman or Wonder Woman at all. If we’re reading that detail right, that’s no Superman or Wonder Woman until 2026 at the earliest, but it is said as an aside, so maybe it’s not something people should dwell on just yet.
From there, it’s mainly about Johnson, his ambitious plans for his character, and the way he went about it—which didn’t please a lot of people at Warner Bros, which may not have helped his chances with Gunn and Safran because surely they were told about the situation.
For one, you know that Johnson touted for months before “Black Adam” that “the hierarchy of power” was about to shift and change in the DC Universe. And it seems like behind-the-scenes, Johnson had the same confidence.
He apparently pitched Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, according to Variety and their sources, “on a multiyear plan for Black Adam and a Cavill-led Superman in which the two properties would interweave, setting up a Superman-versus-Black Adam showdown” (and to be fair, Johnson talked about this publicly too) Johnson and his managers were apparently attempting to take DC on a “new path.”
But the issue was in doing so, they went around everyone at Warner Bros.—DC head Walter Hamada and Warner Bros. film chief Toby Emmerich and it evidently ruffled feathers internally. “Dwayne went around everyone, which didn’t sit well,” one source told the trade outlet.
Ultimately, “Black Adam” cost nearly $250 million after reshoots (some say $260 million) and couldn’t even crack $400 million worldwide; not super impressive numbers for a superhero property, even post-pandemic. But Johnson kept pushing, including pushing for a producing credit on “DC League Of Super Pets.” “His demands increased, and the returns just weren’t there,” a source told Variety.
Reading between the lines, it scans like a lot of this information was communicated to Safran and Gunn, frankly, and they knew they couldn’t work with someone who wanted to control the entire direction of the franchises. Sure, they’re the bosses, but it’s not like they’re working in a vacuum and not listening to Warner Bros. film co-heads Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy and other WB execs that might not have loved how this all went down. Maybe more details will emerge, but that’s all the hot goss for now.
