After an uneven couple of years trying to build the next big cinematic universe, Warner Bros. is essentially hitting the reset key on the DC Universe and starting over from scratch with a small but focused slate of films and TV projects. Led by Co-Chairmen and CEOs of DC Studios, James Gunn and Peter Safran, the first ten DC Studios projects–five movies and five HBO Max TV series–are all set in the same universe and will see comic book icons star alongside a squad lesser-known anti-heroes, a con artist from the future, intergalactic cops, and Gotham’s best vigilantes.
Matt Reeves will return to his Caped Crusader with a sequel to The Batman, and as previously announced, director Todd Phillips is reuniting with Joaquin Phoenix for Joker: Folie à Deux. These two films will be set in an Elseworlds continuity, existing outside of the bubble of the main continuity. “The DCU’s a multiverse, but we’re going to be focusing on one universe from that multiverse,” Safran explained via the DC website. “And if something isn’t DCU, we’re going to make that very clear. So, strictly adult fare like Todd Phillips’ Joker, or kids animation like Teen Titans Go, we’re going to make it very clear that those are DC Elseworlds, just the same way that they do it in the comic books.”
While Superman and Batman are familiar faces who’ll headline their own films, Gunn said the creative teams he’s been working with are looking to shine a light on more obscure corners of the DC Universe. “Here at DC, we have Metropolis, Gotham, Themyscira, Atlantis, Bialya… This is the world that we’re creating,” Gunn said. “We’re coming into a world where superheroes exist and have existed for some time in one form or another, and that’s the universe. We are telling a big, huge central story that is like Marvel, except that I think we’re a lot more planned out than Marvel from the beginning because we’ve gotten a group of writers together to work the story out completely.”
