James Gunn and Peter Safran Are Out as DC Studios Bosses, and Gunn Sounds Relieved

James Gunn and Peter Safran are done running DC Studios. Skydance announced Monday that the two are stepping down as co-chairmen and co-CEOs after four years, and that Jeremy Latcham, one of the producers who built the early Marvel Cinematic Universe, takes over as president and chief creative officer on Dec. 1. Then Gunn posted his own goodbye on Threads, and it reads less like a man who lost a job than a man who just got his weekends back.

What Skydance announced

Latcham will lead DC’s film, television and animation slate and will report to Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein, the co-chairs of Skydance Motion Picture Group. Gunn and Safran, the company says, are returning to creative work full time. That starts with finishing Man of Tomorrow, Gunn’s Superman sequel, which is in post-production and dated for July 9, 2027.

Skydance chairman and CEO David Ellison and co-CEO Ynon Kreiz credited the pair with resetting DC’s foundation and said they expect them to help with a smooth handover. In a joint statement, Gunn and Safran pointed to Superman, Peacemaker, Creature Commandos, Lanterns and Clayface as the work they’re proudest of, and noted that their history with Latcham goes back to Marvel.

What Gunn said himself

The corporate statements are polite. Gunn’s Threads post is the interesting one. He writes that he wasn’t sure he wanted the job when it was offered, that he’s glad he took it, and that having the run of the DC characters he drew as a kid in Manchester, Missouri was a dream. Then he gets candid: only the people closest to him knew, he says, that his time at DC Studios has been “trying, to say the least.”

He says he dislikes the corporate side of the job and thanks Safran for absorbing most of it. He says running a studio ate the downtime he used to get as a filmmaker, apologizes to his wife, Jennifer Holland, by name, and adds that she’s the happiest person alive that he’s no longer doing it. The hardest part, he writes, was splitting his attention between the projects he loved, the ones he didn’t, and everything else a studio head has to do.

His summary of how he feels: “incredibly relieved and excited to get back to pure filmmaking.”

He is also clear that this is not a goodbye to DC. Beyond Man of Tomorrow, Gunn says he and Safran have just been engaged on another DC project, which he is writing. He doesn’t name it. And he says the characters they set up will live on.

What the post doesn’t say is whose decision this was. The Hollywood Reporter flagged the same open question: whether Gunn and Safran chose to move on or were moved. Gunn’s relief is real on the page. That’s a different thing from an account of what happened in the room, and nobody has given one on the record.

Who is Jeremy Latcham?

If you watched the MCU get built, you’ve seen his name in the credits. Per Variety, Latcham was an associate producer on Iron Man, a co-producer on Iron Man 2, and an executive producer on The Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, Avengers: Age of Ultron and Spider-Man: Homecoming. Guardians is where he and Gunn worked together. After leaving Marvel he produced Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves for Paramount.

In his own statement, Latcham called the DC characters some of the most iconic in American pop culture and said he doesn’t take the responsibility lightly.

Why nobody saw it coming

Five weeks ago this was supposed to be settled. Deadline reported on Oct. 2 that Gunn and Safran would stay on after a meeting with Ellison went well, and both were named to Skydance’s leadership team when the Warner Bros. takeover closed on Oct. 6. Warner Bros. Pictures chiefs Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy were out. The DC bosses were the ones who made it through.

The org chart is changing along with the names. THR notes that Gunn and Safran reported straight to the top of Warner Bros. Discovery. Latcham reports into the film group. The news also landed on the same morning Skydance reported third-quarter earnings, per Deadline.

The scorecard they leave behind

Three theatrical releases, three very different results. Superman made $618 million worldwide. Supergirl stalled at $126.4 million this summer. Clayface, the $40 million R-rated horror swing, is at $109 million through three weekends, according to TheWrap. On TV, they leave with Peacemaker, Creature Commandos and Lanterns on the board.

Our read: Gunn loses the office and keeps the keyboard

This part is interpretation, not reporting. The DCU’s lead writer-director is still writing and directing its flagship, and by his own account he’s already on the next thing. What changes is who decides everything around him. DC Studios was a filmmaker-run label that answered to the CEO. On Dec. 1 it becomes a division inside the film group, run by a producer.

Three weeks ago we called Clayface a test of whether DC’s filmmaker-first, any-genre approach could survive a cautious new parent company. Clayface is passing its own test. The leadership changed anyway. Whether the small, strange, director-driven projects keep getting made is now Latcham’s call, and he hasn’t said a word about the slate yet.

Skydance’s announcement didn’t move any release dates. Man of Tomorrow is still July 9, 2027, and The Batman Part II is still Feb. 18, 2028. What it didn’t address is the rest of the plan Gunn and Safran laid out in 2023, or who gets the final say on what counts as DCU canon now that the person who drew the map has handed back the keys.

There’s one irony worth sitting with. DC spent four years trying to turn a director into its Kevin Feige. Its next move is hiring someone who actually worked for him.

We’ll update this story as Skydance, Latcham or Gunn say more.

Sources: Skydance statements via TheWrap, Variety, Deadline and The Hollywood Reporter (Nov. 9, 2026); James Gunn on Threads (Nov. 9, 2026); Deadline (Oct. 2, 2026).