DC Studios is in a state of upheaval, with former Marvel Studios executive Jeremy Latcham named the new CEO in place of the ousted James Gunn and Peter Safran.
Page Six has shared additional details about the change today, including the fact that Latcham has been "under an NDA for the past three weeks while negotiating his contract with Skydance to take the DC reins." Yes, while a buoyant Gunn was hitting the red carpet for Clayface, his successor was in active talks to usurp him.
"It was a little bit strange to have it be so publicly stated that [Gunn and Safran] were safe, and during that time, the [Latcham] process had already been kicked off," a source tells the site. "They were saying one thing, and then they were actively doing another thing."
However, before condemning Latcham for being offered the job of a lifetime, it's worth noting that the piece says he's actually of the most well-liked people working in Hollywood today.
As one top agent put it, "You’d be hard pressed to find a person of greater integrity than this guy. Jeremy is a friend to artists, and he is an ideas person who is calm, a fair dealer, and just couldn’t be a better human being."
Another called him a "very good dude," while an executive he worked with at Marvel Studios described Latcham as someone with "a brilliant commercial sensibility and is very very well liked."
Fans also appear to be warming to the new DC Studios CEO, especially after reading some resurfaced comments from the veteran producer on how he sets out to make movies. In fact, the vast majority seem to agree that this approach would suit the DCU well...
"I've never been interested in just making an action movie. To me, it's like the reason a movie would stick around with you is because of the characters and because you see them overcoming flaws and becoming better people and redeeming themselves, or growing or learning or something. And so that was super important on all those films, was just to instill a sense of heart. And so it wasn't instilling faith, per se, but it was instilling redemptive qualities into these characters and seeing the growth that they could have and seeing how that could be relatable to your own life."
"My thing is always heart, humor, spectacle, in that order. That's my thing that I say over and over 1000 times on a movie, people make fun of me for, because I'm always like, 'Do we care? Is there heart? Are we laughing along the way?' And obviously you need spectacle because it's a movie, but heart's really what I care about when we're developing a film."