A lot of different names started doing the rounds online when it was revealed Warner Bros. Discovery was hunting for someone to take charge of the DC Extended Universe. Ultimately, they chose two people to bring this 10-year plan to life: The Suicide Squad writer and director James Gunn and Shazam! and Aquaman producer Peter Safran.
With that, DC Studios was created, and following yesterday's slate reveal, the excitement for the DCU is palpable.
While only time will tell whether they have what it takes to finally create a true shared DC Universe, Gunn arrives in this role with a fair bit of experience in comic book franchises after taking charge of Guardians of the Galaxy for Marvel Studios.
So, is the DCU just a knock-off MCU (the similarities between the names are hard to ignore) or truly something new for the genre?
"A lot of people think this can be Marvel 2.0. And definitely, I learned a lot of stuff at Marvel," Gunn said at a recent press event (via Collider). "You know, I think that we have a lot of differences. I think that one of the reasons why I love DC is it really is another universe. It's an alternate world."
"In Marvel, generally, it's, you know, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and then everyplace else in the world is a fictional universe for some reason. Here at DCU, we have Metropolis and Gotham and Themyscira, and Atlantis, and all of that is another fictional universe."
Gunn would go on to confirm that the DCU is a world where "superheroes exist and have existed for some time," and went on to reveal the advantage he believes this franchise has over the MCU.
"We are telling a big, huge central story that is like Marvel, except for, I think that we're a lot more planned out than Marvel from the beginning," the filmmaker and DC Studios co-CEO explains, "because we've gotten a group of writers together to work that story out completely."
"But we're also creating a universe that is like Star Wars, where there's different times, different places, different things, or like Game of Thrones, where characters are a little bit more morally complex."
Gunn certainly seems confident, and it feels like he and Safran are dreaming up something really special with this slate of movies and TV shows. It's about time DC finds the success it deserves on screen, anyway, and "Chapter 1: Gods and Monsters" feels like a great start.