Posted in: Comics, Current News, HBO, Max, Movies, TV | Tagged: dc comics, dc studios, james gunn
DC Studios Rumor Reaction: James Gunn Did Right by Jim Lee & DC Comics
James Gunn made it clear he wanted DC Studios and DC Comics separate; one of the reasons why we hope the Jim Lee rumor is a bad joke.
Article Summary
- DC Studios rumor says Jim Lee felt frozen out, but nothing is confirmed and the timing raises bigger questions.
- James Gunn repeatedly said DC Studios and DC Comics should stay separate, with comics outside his filmed-media role.
- Gunn even rejected DCU canon comics for now, arguing DC Studios should keep continuity focused on film and TV.
- Even with that divide, Gunn consistently boosted DC Comics creators, credits, and releases while rebuilding DC Studios.
It didn’t take long for the rumor mill to explode after the news hit that Skydance’s DC Studios and James Gunn and Peter Safran were parting ways, with Marvel Studios vet Jeremy Latcham taking over (though no longer answering directly to Skydance CEOs David Ellison and Ynon Kreiz). One of the rumors, reported on this very site, was that Jim Lee, Publisher, President, and CCO of DC Comics, “felt stymied or frozen out” by Gunn and Safran. In fact, Lee was reportedly taking on side projects to help ease his transition out of DC Comics, but that apparently changed with the news of Latcham’s appointment. To be clear, this was a rumor, and no one has gone on the record officially with anything. It could very well just be that: a rumor. But let’s assume it’s true for a second. As someone who has lived and breathed Television – and not Comics – his entire life, I have to ask. Why did Gunn owe DC Comics or Lee anything more than he already gave? Initially, I wrote it off as Lee taking advantage of someone heading out the door to get a couple of digs in. But it kept gnawing at me, and I finally figured out why.
What made my eyebrow arch about the “felt stymied or frozen out” line is that Gunn made it clear from the very beginning that he was looking to keep DC Studios and DC Comics as complete, separate entities. During a Twitter Q&A from November 2022, Gunn made it clear that while there will be “very open communication” with DC Comics, there’s a clear line between the two. “As everyone knows, I’m a huge comic book fan and I hope everything we do will lead to more people reading DC Comics (and vice versa). But Peter and I are not in charge of the comics — just all filmed DC entertainment,” he noted at the time.
Three years later, Gunn was still hesitant to have the DC Studios and DC Comics worlds collide. In September 2025, a fan asked Gunn if he would be okay with DC Comics publishing an origin story for David Corenswet‘s Superman. “Even with me and our guy Phil (whose job it is to keep it all together) on canon in the DCU, with multiple films and shows it’s still hard to keep track of,” Gunn responded. “Adding comics at this time would be too much for the lean DC team. So right now, nothing is canon outside of the filmed media.”
But Gunn wanting to keep each thing being its own thing didn’t mean he wasn’t constantly giving DC Comics its flower for creating such a vast sandbox for them to play in. In response to a fan asking if there was a specific era of DC Comics he wanted his and Safran’s DCU to focus on, Gunn noted in February 2025, “One of the fun things about creating the DCU is taking elements from all different eras of DC Comics.”
And that led to my other problem with the Lee rumor. While Lee may have felt “stymied or frozen out” by Gunn and Safran, it would be tough for him to say that Gunn didn’t do his part to ensure that comic creators and the industry overall were respected. That’s included inviting comics professionals to the sets of DC Studios productions to see their work come to life, ensuring that creators are properly credited in a film or television series’ credits, and even turning his social media into a year-round reminder of when DC Comics characters first appeared that gives the creators the credit they’re due. He’s gotten into a ton of online conversations about how much of a comics fan he still is – again, using his social media to promote comic book releases. In fact, I’m not sure it would be a stretch to say that it felt like Gunn had become a one-person marketing team for the comics side. And don’t forget that all of this was going on while Gunn and Safran were attempting to craft a new DCU out of the mess that stemmed from the DCEU. Again, I can’t say whether the rumor is true. I’m hoping that it’s a steaming pile of nonsense. But if it is true, then this sounds a whole lot more personal and professional.
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