David Zaslav, CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns DC Studios, also said at a quarterly earnings call last August that The Flash was one of the upcoming projects he was excited about. According to Rolling Stone, the company held an emergency meeting in March 2022 to discuss Miller’s future in the DCU.
Gunn, who took over as co-CEO of DC Studios alongside Peter Safran in October, said on Tuesday that most DC films, television, video games, and animated features will be connected in the same world. The first chapter of the DCU will be called “Gods and Monsters.” DC Studio films that aren’t a part of the DCU, like Matt Reeves’ The Batman Part II and Todd Phillips’s Joker: Folie à Deux, will be labeled “DC Elseworlds.”
In addition to Shazam! Fury of the Gods, Gunn also announced release dates for the forthcoming 2023 films Blue Beetle (Aug. 18) and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (Dec. 25). The next Superman film will be called Superman: Legacy, he said. It’s scheduled to be released on July 11, 2025. He said he’s in the middle of writing the film, which will be “the true beginning of the DCU.”
The DCU is also bringing back a major sidekick for its film slate. A Batman and Robin movie titled The Brave and the Bold will focus on Bruce Wayne and his son Damian Wayne, which Gunn said is his favorite iteration of Robin. “He’s a little assassin who Batman tries to get in line, so this is the story of the two of them and the beginning of the Bat family in the DCU,” he said. A date wasn’t announced for the film.
