To say his first several weeks in charge of DC Studios has been a bit of a rollercoaster for James Gunn and Peter Safran is the understatement of 2022. Now the writer-director, and Warner Bros. Discovery, seem to have pushed fans too far after canceling Henry Cavill’s return as Superman, leading to two new hashtags trending on Twitter to #BringBackZackSnyder and #FireJamesGunn. Snyder fans have campaigned for his return to the DC franchise for years with the hashtag #RestoreTheSnyderVerse, and just weeks after that dream was seemingly shut down for good, this week’s events have brought Snyder’s army surging back.Fans have never been able to let go of the “what might have been” of the SnyderVerse, and having partially won their war when Zack Snyder’s Justice League was released in 2021 the same group of people have started to feel that any social media campaign can achieve whatever they want. However, although it appears to be a futile effort, the news of Henry Cavill being dropped only a month after seemingly being confirmed to be bringing Superman back in a big way has stirred the social media pot into a frenzy.James Gunn has become the focus of many fans’ anger, with thousands jumping on the #BringBackZackSnyder and #FireJamesGunn hashtags and demanding that Warner Bros. Discovery get rid of Gunn and even give the franchise to someone who can deliver it properly. You can see some of the messages posted on Twitter in the wake of Cavill’s departure.
Can Gunn, Safran and WBD Turn Around the DCU?
Everyone loves an underdog story, but no one ever believed that the DCU would ever be one of the biggest underdogs in modern cinema. Having got off to a popular start with Man of Steel in 2016, Snyder’s master plan for the franchise took a stumble with Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice and collapsed entirely when the director was forced to leave Justice League part way through shooting. Since then, the DCEU failed to regain its footing, staggering from one semi-successful movie to the next.
Black Adam was purportedly the new DCU’s Iron Man, and pitched by Dwayne Johnson as the “hierarchy changing” movie that was going kick-start the franchise. However, that has not happened, and after promising much, the film instead has certainly changed the hierarchy by bringing it crashing down. This now leaves the upcoming slate of Shazam! Fury of the Gods, The Flash, Blue Beetle, and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom in a strange limbo, as potentially big movies that people now know there is no real reason get invested in.
What this leaves is an almost insurmountable climb ahead for Gunn, Safran and WBD as they attempt to win over DC fans with an entirely new DCU that seems to be kicking off with a younger iteration of Superman and will have its full slate announced early in 2023. Whether those plans will be enough to win back the support of the fractured fan base is something that only time will tell, but it is clearly not going to be an easy task by any means.