DC Studios Turbulence: ‘The Flash’ Director Andy Muschetti Seemingly Out On ‘The Brave And The Bold’ As ‘The Authority’, ‘Booster Gold’, ‘Swamp Thing’, And ‘Waller’ Begin To Stall Out
In the first major ‘less than great’ status update for the fledgling cinematic universe, DC Studios co-head James Gunn has confessed that despite their best efforts, a handful of upcoming projects – namely The Authority, The Brave and The Bold, Booster Gold, Swamp Thing and Waller – are struggling to get off the ground.
The Superman director provided insight into the Warner Bros. Discovery subsidiary’s current struggles while speaking to attendees of an exclusive DC Studios press event, as held this past Friday, February 21st.
Following general progress reports regarding the various DCU projects that are currently in development, such as Clayface (set to shoot this summer), Dynamic Duo (now in pre-production), Lanterns (filming began last week in LA), Sgt. Rock (now in search of its lead actor following Daniel Craig’s exit), and Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow (which is currently half-way through production), Gunn copped to his endeavor’s failings and admitted that not all of his silver screen superhero plans were moving along so swiftly.
To this end, Gunn kicked off this section of the event with a note on the Amanda Waller-centric, Peacemaker-sequel HBO TV series Waller, recalling “We’ve taken a couple of cracks at it but still haven’t been able land.”
“Waller has been a bumpy road,” he added.
From there, he turned to the Booster Gold TV series and revealed that not only had his and Safran’s unnamed ‘first choice’ for showrunner completely lost interest in the job – “maybe he fell out of love, maybe he got busy,” said Gunn – but also that this shake-up had forced DC Studios “to pivot” in their plans for the show’s production (though he did not provide any details as to just what changes said ‘pivot’ had entailed).
Next up was the cinematic adaptation of the WildStorm imprints premiere, Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch-created super team The Authority, which Gunn said “has had a harder time coming along”.
“It hasn’t been much a priority because it has been subsumed [by his work on other DC Studios projects],” he added.
And then there was the DCU first-announced horror outing, Swamp Thing, which last fans heard was on track to be both penned and directed by Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny director James Mangold.
Unfortunately, it now seems that the director has put the project on the furthest end of his backburner, with Gunn noting that in terms of active moves on the film, he and Mangold “talk about it occasionally.”
However, perhaps most worryingly for DC Studios was revelation that their plans for the Caped Crusader, save for those related to the aforementioned puppet-animation-hybrid film Dynamic Duo, were in various states of disarray.
In terms of the sequel to Matt Reeves’ The Batman, Safran, who was also in attendance, informed the crowd that the director had “yet to turn in a full script but what we have read so far is incredibly encouraging.”
Next, Safran seemed to suggest that The Flash director Muschietti was no longer attached to write and helm the hero’s proper DCU debut in The Brave and the Bold, explaining that “We’re developing the Brave and Bold script right now and he’ll be the first one to see it.”
This apparent staffing shake-up was further hinted at by Gunn himself, who additionally confirmed, “Everybody knows I love Batman and it’s important to me so I’m working very closely with the writer on Brave and the Bold,” all the while notably remaining vague as to his writing’s partners identity rather than just naming Muschietti.
All in all, while Gunn and Safran work to navigate these choppy waters, the DCU’s first official cinematic entry, Superman, is currently on course to make planetfall on July 11th.
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