With the arrival of the first official DCU entry Creature Commandos, DC Studios’ James Gunn has been making the press rounds. And he’s dropped a few tidbits about what to expect from the greater DCU, which really gets into gear when Superman and Peacemaker season two arrive in 2025. Gunn of course was a key figure in Marvel Studios’ earliest phases. But while appearing on the Happy Sad Confused podcast (via IGN) Gunn stated the DCU slate won’t totally resemble how the MCU did things. And it will look much more like how modern Star Wars does it. Here’s what he had to say:
This is about a connected universe. We’re world building. We’re not story building. We’re not writing one story that has a beginning, middle, and end. We’re creating a universe in which people can go and join into this universe and experience it. It is much more like Star Wars than Marvel in that respect. There are some things you gotta be kinda loose about. There are lots of product names in Peacemaker. He’s mentioning celebrities all the time. Superman’s a different sort of world. It’s not about real people in a real world. It’s about this mythical DC universe. Those are two stories created by the same person in the same universe and even those are different in terms of the vibrations they’re giving.
Fans of DC Comics recognize this as very in keeping with how the publisher has handled their universe for decades. In DC Comics, the gritty Gotham of Frank Miller’s Batman lives in the same world as the supernatural Swamp Thing. Not to mention the goofy original Teen Titans comics, or the fantastical Aquaman. DC books each have their own storytelling flavor, much more so than Marvel, which all tend to gel together in tone. And yet, they all co-exist in the same universe (or rather, the same multiverse). Gunn is smart to take this same approach for the DCU. This has worked pretty well for Star Wars. After all, Andor couldn’t be more different from Skeleton Crew. Both co-exist in the same galaxy, and the audience never questions it. If that’s the blueprint, we’re here for it.