Fans and critics alike are still sitting gobsmacked by the news that James Gunn and Peter Safran have “stepped down” as the co-heads of DC Studios, after four years in the position. As reports continue to come out, it’s looking more and more like this ‘stepping down’ was far less voluntary than it initially seemed; rumors are circulating that Skydance CEO David Ellison was already looking at a replacement for Gunn and Safran, back when the Warner Bros. merger with Paramount-Skydance was still in negotiation. Whatever the timeline is, Skydance found a replacement in Jeremy Latcham, a longtime producer and executive in Hollywood.
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Reporting about Latcham is coming out as fast as the post-mortem news pieces on why Gunn is out. And, while there is plenty to debate about his track record, views, and strategies for moviemaking, there is one thing to understand: Jeremy Latcham has helped big Hollywood franchises make some of their most pivotal moves – and DC is not the only place where he’s about to do it again.
Seeing the Vision: The Launch of the MCU
Jeremy Latcham’s career in Hollywood began with the MCU: he was an associate producer on the very first Iron Man(2008) movie, alongside a more experienced associate producer, Eric Heffron (Spider-Mantrilogy), as well as the core producer team of that early era. That includes his mentor Kevin Feige, Avi Arad, and Victoria Alonso. When Iron Manbecame a box office hit and franchise-starter, Latcham got to ride the coattails of that success into a co-producer role on Jon Favreau’s sequel, Iron Man 2. The success of that film blew the doors of the MCU wide open; Latcham was one of the earliest people with a seat at the franchise’s table, and he certainly didn’t waste the opportunity.
Selling the Vision: Building Hollywood’s Biggest Franchise
After Iron Man 2, Jeremy Latcham slid into an executive producer role at Marvel Studios. His first move was helping turn The Avengers team-up film into a billion-dollar box-office success that also became a generational brand and merchandising cash cow. Selling the sequel film, Avengers: Age of Ultron,was a no-brainer; the $1.4 billion box office and even bigger merchandising returns were more proof that Latcham was savvy about scaling the MCU into themajor event in global entertainment.
He was also willing to take a risk on a project called Guardians of the Galaxy, which was put in the hands of up-and-coming filmmaker James Gunn. It featured a set of oddball characters that were obscure even to comic book fans, but Latcham was one of the early believers in the property being the next Star Wars, and was the one who actually sold Gunn on the idea:
“This guy [Latcham] is the guy who I went into a meeting room… with him and another guy by the name of Jonathan Schwartz… and we walked in, and they pitched me the idea for Guardians of the Galaxy,” Gunn said during a red carpet interview alongside Latcham at the 2014 premiere of Guardians. “And I sat there nodding my head, and they showed me some artwork that they had some things planned. And I sat there nodding my head and smiling; I shook their hand on the way out, I said, ‘Okay’; I walked out the door, and I thought, ‘Those guys are… Marvel’s going to lose its winning streak [laughs].”
“And then I started driving home, and I thought, ‘Wait a Second. This could be the perfect movie: the movie I always wanted to make. It has everything I love: It has Marvel superheroes; it’s a space epic, which I never thought I’d get to do, and it has raccoons in it, because I actually love raccoons, so what’s better?’ And then I just saw the whole thing! And it’s weird because the movie that I saw in my head, on that car ride away from Marvel, that’s the movie we made.”
With The Avengersand Guardians of the Galaxyboth on his resume, Latcham had one more Marvel miracle to perform: getting Sony and Marvel Studios united in the historic deal that brought Tom Holland’s Spider-Man into the MCU, and launched a new jointly shared Spider-Man movie franchise with Spider-Man: Homecoming(2017). After that, the runway was set and the MCU celebrated nothing but hits and box office records throughout the rest of the 2010s, while Latcham entered a new phase of his career.
Building the Next Big Franchise IPs
Jeremy Latcham’s career may have been a bit quieter in the 2020s, but he’s still working with the same kind of tenacity he always did. In the first part of the decade, he spent time helping to get Dungeons & Dragonsout of movie limbo and onto the screen. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves(2023) was the final result. It earned just a little over its massive production budget ($208 million worldwide), and couldn’t get a larger franchise started; that said, Honor Among Thieveshas become a growing cult hit that keeps sparking conversations about possible sequels or spinoffs.
After D&D, Latcham has set his sights on another fandom genre that could become the next big dominant cinematic franchise: live-action anime adaptations. While Marvel may have stalled on doing a Shang-Chi sequel, director Destin Daniel Cretton already proved what he’s capable of by making his Spider-Man film, Brand New Day, the highest-grossing Spider-Man film and the highest-grossing domestic box office earner of all time. Now, Cretton is taking his skills to a live-action Narutomovie, and Latcham was once again throwing his weight behind the endeavor. Narutois one of the biggest IPs in modern anime, and if Cretton adapts it correctly, Hollywood will have the blueprint for an entire line of anime adaptations (and franchise universes) that will follow. (UPDATE: Jeremy Latcham has announced that he is “untangling” himself from the live-action Naruto movie to focus on DC.)
Now, with DC in his hands, Jeremy Latcham is one of the biggest names in the business of fandom entertainment. Hopefully he leads these properties to the same kind of success that Marvel saw. Skydance seems to already be pushing toward big events like Justice League, with major characters like Batman and Wonder Woman making their debut sooner rather than later. Let’s see if Latcham can get them there in time to both make it lucrative for the studio and still a coherent and compelling journey for the fans.
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