By Ben Fritz

It's a bird! It's a plane! It better be a hit movie!

For the past quarter-century, one Warner Bros. executive after another has promised they would finally make the studio's DC Comics brand soar. None of them succeeded.

Each new strategy became mired in corporate politics and filmmaker egos that prevented DC's Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman from matching the big screen success of Marvel's Spider-Man, Captain America and Black Panther.

Now, Warner Bros. is starting over -- again. A Superman reboot opening this week marks the unveiling of a plan that executives and fans agree is the studio's last, best hope to revitalize DC.

Warner executives want "Superman" to gross more than $500 million globally -- a fraction of the size of Marvel's billion-dollar blockbusters, but a hit by any other measure. Just as importantly, Warner needs audiences to love what they see and to be eager for more, because the movie is the launchpad for a new DC cinematic universe. Coming next are a Supergirl spinoff, a Green Lantern TV show and multiple Batman films.

The stakes are existential for DC and huge for its parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery.

Chief Executive David Zaslav has frequently touted his repair plan for DC while his company's stock price has lingered at less than half of where it started when Discovery and Warner merged three years ago. Zaslav has told Wall Street analysts that DC is "one of the biggest value creation opportunities for us" that "could and should be a game changer."

The company is preparing to spin off its cable networks, which will make the remaining Warner Bros. studio and HBO Max streaming service a dwarf in an entertainment industry dominated by giants like Netflix and Amazon.com. DC will be the slimmed-down company's most important wholly owned franchise and critical to its success or failure.

The new "Superman" is written and directed by James Gunn, who Zaslav tapped to run the newly formed DC Studios with producer Peter Safran. The endless infighting for control of the superheroes is over. For the first time in Warner's history, an executive team is overseeing DC in all media, meaning they and the CEO who hired them have full responsibility for the brand's fate.

They picked a daunting task coming out of the gate by rebooting a character who launched superhero comics in 1938 and created the template for the modern superhero movie in 1978. Gunn's film centers on the conflict between the man of steel's earnest values and the messy morality of the modern world when he intervenes in an overseas conflict and the public turns against him.

The cast, led by David Corenswet in the title role, consists of mostly little-known actors. That helped temper the $225 million budget.

The movie reintroduces well-known characters like Lois Lane and Lex Luthor and prominently features Superman's dog, Krypto. It also gives a taste of Gunn's vision for the broader DC universe, with roles for minor superheroes like Hawkgirl and Mister Terrific.

Gunn is considering TV spinoffs for characters like Mister Terrific and cub reporter Jimmy Olsen, a knowledgeable person said.

Though Batman sells more comic books and merchandise, Superman is the world's most iconic comic-book superhero and has always set the tone for how the public perceives DC.

"If Superman is working, the feeling from the audience is that DC overall is working," said Dan DiDio, who worked at DC Comics for 18 years as executive editor and then co-publisher.

Prerelease surveys indicate the new film will have a big opening weekend of more than $125 million domestically. But 2006's "Superman Returns" and 2013's "Man of Steel" had solid starts, only to leave many fans disappointed that the title character was too simple or too violent. Neither sparked the kind of enthusiasm for DC that the widely beloved "Iron Man" did when it kicked off the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2008. The Disney-owned MCU became the highest grossing franchise in Hollywood history, earning $32 billion over 36 films.

Comic book fan Loren Schroder, who was watching actors pose in front of giant "S" symbols at the "Superman" premiere in Hollywood on Monday, considers the new movie to be "make or break" for DC Studios.

"The torch has been passed to James Gunn," the 28 year-old said. "This is his introduction to prove that he can do it."

Gunning for glory

The 58-year-old Gunn's Hollywood career started with superheroes. After years making low-budget films in New York, he found a way to get his script for a superhero satire called "The Specials" to Safran, who is now 59.

Safran, who had abandoned life as a corporate lawyer to become a talent manager and producer, signed Gunn as a client and produced "The Specials." Gunn's filmography grew with an eclectic mix of horror, comedy and "Scooby-Doo" movies until he made it big with Marvel's "Guardians of the Galaxy" in 2014.

He built a reputation as a brash provocateur who was nevertheless able to work within the studio system. By 2018, Gunn's tendency to speak without a filter nearly ended his career.

Old jokes he had made about sexual assault on social media resurfaced and Disney fired him from the third "Guardians." Gunn immediately apologized and the "Guardians" cast rallied to his defense, but Hollywood had virtually no tolerance for past misbehavior during the height of the #MeToo movement.

Warner Bros., meanwhile, was looking for help with its DC movies, which were floundering for the umpteenth time. Christopher Nolan's "Dark Knight" trilogy had been a critical and commercial smash, but didn't include any other superheroes. The director was so adamant about his control of everything Batman that he convinced Warner Bros. to kill a TV show other producers were developing about the early life of sidekick Robin.

Director Zack Snyder tried to launch a new DC universe with 2016's "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice." But his grim and gritty films polarized audiences and the "Snyderverse" ended abruptly with the 2017 debacle "Justice League."

Soon after, Warner executives met with Kevin Feige, the longtime president of Marvel Studios, to try to convince him to switch sides, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Those talks fizzled.

Then, during a fateful meeting in the Warner Bros. gym, the studio's movie chief Toby Emmerich told Safran he thought Gunn had been treated unfairly by Disney and asked if his newly unemployed client might be willing to tackle Superman.

Gunn was hesitant. "How can you take this character who's perceived as old-fashioned by so many [and] do it for a modern audience?" he recently recalled thinking. He instead agreed to make the DC movie "The Suicide Squad," an antihero tale more in his wheelhouse.

Eight months after firing him, Disney rehired Gunn on "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3." But he hadn't stopped thinking about Superman. He agreed to write a script after devising a story he described as "both utterly human and utterly fantastic."

'No one was minding the mint'

Around the same time in 2022, Zaslav was exploring how to fix DC. He dismissed as too woke a script being written by Ta-Nehisi Coates about a Black Superman in the civil rights era, according to people familiar with the matter. Gunn and Safran could still try to make the movie in the future, some of the people added.

Zaslav also decided it was finally time to end the decades of corporate feuding by having all things DC report to one set of bosses. Marvel had long been set up that way under Feige, and Zaslav's goal was to match the rival studio's success.

Midlevel Warner executives had pitched the same idea many times before, but senior leaders were unwilling or unable to wrest control of DC away from fiefdoms in film, television, animation and licensing or from filmmakers who managed certain characters.

"There was always friction pulling DC together because there were a lot of individual ideas, rather than one overarching vision," said DiDio.

Zaslav started meeting with people who had thoughts on how to fix DC, including actor and professional wrestler Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson. Those talks ended after the star's DC movie "Black Adam" flopped.

During a Zoom meeting with Gunn and Safran in September 2022 about "Superman" that turned into a three-hour discussion about life and the meaning of superheroes, Zaslav started thinking they were the leaders he was looking for. A lunch on the Warner Bros. lot the next month sealed the deal.

Gunn would be the creative filter through which everything DC would run. Safran, who produced DC movies including the hit "Aquaman" and bomb "Shazam! Fury of the Gods," would be the operator steering the business. They were given oversight of film, TV, videogames and licensing and are producing every project with a 13-person team who work out of a small office on the Warner lot with a neon Superman "S" on the wall of the lobby.

"The history of DC is pretty messed up," Gunn said soon after taking the job. "No one was minding the mint."

He and Safran halted most DC projects in development, including a third "Wonder Woman" starring Gal Gadot set in the present day, in order to create their own film and TV universe. Their goal isn't just consistent success, but more narrative unity. In the past, wildly different approaches to the big screen "Joker," HBO's "Watchmen" series and the CW Network's "Arrow" left DC without a coherent public identity.

Safran has said he doesn't believe superhero stories should be confined to the action-adventure genre. DC has a horror film about Batman villain Clayface that starts shooting next month and a family animated film in the works about different boys who have been Robin called "The Dynamic Duo."

Gunn and Safran are targeting one animated and two live-action films a year, as well as TV shows that will primarily stream on HBO Max. They aim to eventually re-establish all the company's best known characters, including Batman and Wonder Woman, and unite them in a new Justice League film.

All that comes after "Superman," which will be the first of numerous superhero projects Gunn writes and directs while running DC. His unusual dual role as executive and creative makes him one of the most powerful filmmakers in Hollywood.

Given his history with Marvel's "Guardians of the Galaxy," fans will inevitably compare Gunn's performance at DC to that of his former employer. Marvel Studios has fallen on hard times recently with a string of flops, including May's "Thunderbolts."

If "Superman" outgrosses that film and Marvel's upcoming "The Fantastic Four: First Steps," this would be the first year that DC bests Marvel at the box office since 2008.

Write to Ben Fritz at ben.fritz@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 10, 2025 20:00 ET (00:00 GMT)

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