At the end of January 2023, DC Studios gathered select members of the press and announced plans for a DCU slate dubbed "Chapter 1: Gods and Monsters." Many fans pointed out the similarities to Warner Bros.'s ill-fated 11-movie DCEU slate reveal in 2014 and, unfortunately, some of these DCU projects aren't moving along as well as hoped.
Talking to press, co-CEO Peter Safran said of The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker spin-off Waller, "We’ve taken a couple of cracks at it but still haven’t been able land. Waller has been a bumpy road."
The Authority, meanwhile, is "not the furthest along" according to James Gunn and, subsequently, "hasn't been made much [of] a priority." Safran explained, "It is a very big movie, if you’re going to do it properly. Some of the story elements perhaps that are in Superman and some of the other films we fast-tracked, step a little on the Authority."
It seems work on Swamp Thing has also slowed as Gunn said they only talk to filmmaker James Mangold "occasionally" about the movie.
Booster Gold, meanwhile, has hit a similar stumbling block, and even though a showrunner was nearly attached, Safran confirmed, "Maybe he fell out of love, maybe he got busy, but we had to pivot."
Before getting too concerned about the DCU slate, the event also saw Gunn and Safran officially announce that Sgt. Rock is moving forward with filmmaker Luca Guadagnino (apparently, Daniel Craig was only ever an "idea" as they never met with him).
Teen Titans is also happening with Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow scribe Ana Nogueira attached to write the screenplay.
"It was something that Ana was really impassioned about, and she turned over an amazing script for us," Gunn noted. "She’s fiddling with that now, but it’s definitely not a finished script."
Pushed for an update on Captain America: Brave New World writer Matthew Orton's supposed Deathstroke/Bane feature, Safran responded, "You say that like we’ve said that there’s a Deathstroke/Bane script." Adding that Orton is working on "something" for them, the executive said it's only "kind of like" a Deathstroke/Bane story.
"These questions become headlines because they say, 'Have you ever talked about this?'" a seemingly exasperated later Gunn pointed out. "We’ve talked about literally every permutation on the way to come into this job, in terms of how were we going to handle it, what actors were going to continue over, what were we going to merge."
"We’ve talked about everything. Have we ever talked about Grant Gustin [star of the CW series ‘The Flash’]? Yeah. Have we ever talked about Robert Pattinson? Yeah. We’ve talked about all those things. But serious conversations? No," he added.
Other updates include Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow being halfway through production in London. Lanterns also began shooting in Los Angeles last week.
Finally, three new animated TV shows aimed at a younger audience are also being developed; those are My Adventures with Green Lantern, Starfire and DC Superpowers.
Stay tuned for updates on all these DCU projects as we have them.