James Gunn and Peter Safran were told on Nov. 6, 2026 that they would not be part of the new Skydance mega-studio, ending their four-year run leading DC Studios. Jeremy Latcham was named as their replacement.
The change landed just as Gunn had finished production on Man of Tomorrow, his sequel to Superman, which was heading for a July 2027 release. He was also writing a third installment in a planned trilogy, part of a larger strategy that would have put a Superman movie out every two years and could have pushed the franchise toward a Justice League team-up. For readers tracking David Corenswet’s Superman, the leadership shift now sits at the center of what comes next.
David Ellison and Ynon Kreiz arrived at Gunn and Safran’s offices on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank on Friday, Nov. 6, and the message they delivered reversed what had been expected inside the studio. Before that visit, Gunn and Safran had been given assurances that they would stay on under the new Skydance structure. Instead, the plan changed that day, and the two men who had steered DC for four years were out.
That makes the timing harder to ignore. On Oct. 21, Clayface opened and later crossed more than $100 million globally on a $44 million budget, a modest win that suggested DC had at least one working lane under Gunn and Safran. Yet the new regime moved ahead anyway, choosing Latcham over continuity. Gunn had also advocated for Latcham years earlier on Marvel Studios’ Guardians of the Galaxy, a link that now carries more weight because it connects the incoming executive to the filmmaker he is replacing.
Latcham’s own path helps explain why he surfaced here. Nearly 20 years ago, he and Josh Greenstein first worked together when Latcham was a rising Marvel exec and Greenstein was in the marketing department at Paramount. More recently, Latcham moved to Texas to go independent and focused on inspirational projects such as Flyer and House of David, saying, “I had this nagging feeling that I needed to do more movies that had deeper meaning to me,” and, “Let’s be the HBO for the faith and family audience. Let’s try to make movies and television shows that restore faith in things worth believing in.”
The unanswered question is not who is taking over. It is how much of Gunn’s Superman plan survives the handoff. If the new leadership keeps the July 2027 release and the trilogy idea intact, the transition can be treated as a change at the top. If not, the reset reaches beyond two executives and into the future of the franchise itself.
