The DCU Regime Change Threatens to Turn Man of Tomorrow Into 2027’s Answer to The Flash

It’s fall 2022 and a new regime is announced as taking over DC’s film and TV future even as a major DC movie from the prior regime continues in post-production for release the following summer.

It’s fall 2026 and a new regime is announced as taking over DC’s film and TV future even as a major DC movie from the prior regime continues in post-production for release the following summer.

It’s been four years since James Gunn and Peter Safran were announced as the co-bosses of DC Studios, and just a day since their ouster was revealed, and this nerd reporter is having a serious case of déjà vu.

When Gunn and Safran took the reins of DC in October 2022, they were inheriting several projects that were already far into production: the headline-plagued The Flash, Blue Beetle, and Batgirl.

In 2023, The Flash marked the end of a DC film continuity created just a handful of years earlier — the DCEU, aka the Snyderverse — that would see a group of DC heroes, including Supergirl, band together to stop a cosmic threat to Earth led by one of Superman’s greatest foes.

In 2027, Man of Tomorrow will potentially mark the end of a DC film continuity created just a handful of years earlier — the DCU — that will see a group of DC heroes, including Supergirl, band together to stop a cosmic threat to Earth led by one of Superman’s greatest foes.

The Flash had its heroes out to stop General Zod, while Man of Tomorrow will feature Brainiac (in his live-action film debut). The parallels between the end of Snyder’s DCEU and Gunn’s DCU are depressingly similar. In both cases, new regimes were taking hold of the reins of Warner Bros. and resetting the priorities of its most important superhero IP with little regard to the projects and characters that fans had been conditioned to believe were going to matter going forward.

The regime change of 2022 told fans that the upcoming DC films no longer mattered because they would be ret-conned out of the next iteration of the DC Universe.

Is that where we’re at now with the DCU? Until newly appointed DC Studios boss Jeremy Latcham says otherwise, fans can only suspect we’re back to square one again with upcoming DC projects (unless they heed some fans’ advice not to reboot the DCU again). If that’s it for Gunn and Safran’s “Gods and Monsters,” then why should fans be invested in Man of Tomorrow if it no longer matters? It will just collapse in on itself as The Flash did.

I was at Warner Bros. in late January 2023 when James Gunn and Peter Safran announced their “Gods and Monsters” roadmap. Even then, the invited press, myself included, couldn’t mask our doubts. Haven’t we seen these big presentations and slate reveals before only for them to never materialize? (I was also at a San Diego Comic-Con panel when DC announced a Cyborg solo film, which obviously never happened.)

At that launch event, Gunn and Safran did their best to persuade us that this time would be different. Sadly, it wasn’t. Whatever plans the new DC Studios regime under Jeremy Latcham announces should be met with a comparable degree of skepticism because it could all be over, once again, in a Flash.