James Gunn previewed the DC Studios slate at New York Comic Con on Saturday, where the DC Studios Co-Chairman and CEO teased that the new DC Universe is “beyond what any of us expected.” The panel, which marked the first major update since co-heads Gunn and Peter Safran unveiled their plans for Chapter 1: Gods and Monsters in 2023, brought the latest on the projects spanning phase one — including the Max adult animated series Creature Commandos and Gunn’s Superman movie, described as the “true start” of the new DCU.
Read on for all of the announcements and highlights from the DC Studios panel.
Creature Commandos Cast and Trailer
The first series set in the new DCU, Creature Commandos tracks a secret team of incarcerated monsters recruited for missions deemed too dangerous for humans. “Congress said we can’t use human prisoners,” the Viola Davis-voiced Amanda Waller says in the new Creature Commandos trailer that debuted during the panel. “These a-holes aren’t human.”
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Written by Gunn, the new seven-episode series from DC Studios and Warner Bros. Animation features the voices of Zoe Chao (The Afterparty) as Nina Mazursky, David Harbour (Marvel’s Thunderbolts*) as Frankenstein, Indira Varma (Game of Thrones) as The Bride, Alan Tudyk (Firefly) as Dr. Phosphorus, Steve Agee (Peacemaker) as Economos, Maria Bakalova (Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3) as Princess Ilana, Sean Gunn (The Suicide Squad) as GI Robot and Weasel, Frank Grillo (Captain America: Civil War) as Rick Flag Sr., Anya Chalotra (The Witcher) as Wonder Woman villain Circe, and Davis (Suicide Squad) as Amanda Waller.
It was also revealed frequent Gunn collaborators Linda Cardellini (Scooby-Doo, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3) and Michael Rooker (Guardians of the Galaxy, The Suicide Squad) will guest star, and that Congorilla, the Golden Gorilla, and the Batman villain Clayface are among the characters who will appear in the series.
Creature Commandos premieres December 5 on Max.
The DCU Aesthetic
Creature Commandos and “every single project out of DC Studios is going to be its own thing” in terms of aesthetic, Gunn said, adding that tones will differ between Superman, Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, and HBO’s Lanterns series, which Gunn has likened to a True Detective-type mystery. “It’s a connected universe, but we’re not imposing any overall aesthetic.”
Executive producer Dean Lorey described the aesthetic of Creature Commando as “Eastern European” in style. “We were looking to do something that was sort of grounded, but with some style to it,” Lorey said. “It’s got a lot of really dark, dark tones. The palettes are really cool. But as you can see, it’s very action-oriented. It sets itself apart from, say, [Max adult animated series] Harley Quinn and those kind of shows. It feels more adult.”
“It is an adult show, and it has all the adult things. One of those things is sex,” Tudyk added. The Creature Commandos tone is in line with Gunn’s R-rated The Suicide Squad and the TV-MA Peacemaker.
“Maybe the one thing that this series has in common with Harley and to some extent, Kite Man, even though those are pretty clearly comedies, we took them seriously dramatically,” Lorey said. “We took the relationships very seriously when there was a death or anything like that, but we wanted people to feel it. So that was a little bit of a crossover because this gave us an opportunity to more fully do that than we could do in a pure comedy.”
The New DCU Canon
While Creature Commandos is an aperitif to the new DCU canon that will officially begin with Superman in 2025, Safran and Gunn’s DC Universe will reference the events of the DC Extended Universe. “There are references to things that happened in the past, and those references then become canon in the DCU because we mention them,” Gunn explained.
One such canonical event is the death of Joel Kinnaman’s Rick Flagg in 2021’s The Suicide Squad, which was referenced in Peacemaker season 1 and will be considered canon in Creature Commandos and Peacemaker season 2. Grillo will reprise his role as Rick Flag Sr. in live-action, first in the Superman movie before the sophomore season of Peacemaker later in 2025.
“He’s a major character in Peacemaker season 2. We wanted to cast people who could play those characters live action — at least for the major characters,” Gunn said. “We have ideas for other things, and a couple of these people may appear in other media as other characters soon.”
Although the new DCU canon will reference things that happened in The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker — which were initially set in the DCEU, spanning 2013’s Man of Steel through 2023’s Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom — fans won’t have to be caught up on the old mythology. “This is first and foremost about story. We don’t want anybody to come to Creature Commandos going, ‘You have to watch The Suicide Squad to understand what happened in Creature Commandos,’” Gunn said. “We want people to be able to come in this blind and then be totally excited about it.”
In addition to Viola Davis’ Amanda Waller, DCEU characters who will carry over into the DCU include John Cena’s Peacemaker and Xolo Maridueña’s Jaime Reyes/Blue Beetle.
Peacemaker Season 2
The second season of Peacemaker is “a very different season,” Gunn said, describing it as “very magical.” Gunn recently revealed the first look at a mysterious new character, and shared that he has “a way in” to connect the DCEU and the DCU. “It won’t be confusing.”
Gunn, who serves as showrunner, directed the premiere and shot an episode the night before NYCC. Superbad and Nobody Wants This director Greg Mottola “directed two of the best Peacemaker episodes ever,” Gunn said of episodes two and three of season 2. “John Cena has, honestly, I’ve never seen anyone who has gotten so much better [acting] in such a short amount of time. He was great in the first season. This season, he owns it and he’s amazing.”
Superman
Gunn confirmed that “it won’t be too long” before the first Superman movie trailer, “but it also won’t be too soon.” The first film of the new DCU is set to fly into theaters on July 11, 2025, and stars David Corenswet (Twisters) as Kal-El/Clark Kent, Rachel Brosnahan (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) as Lois Lane, Nicholas Hoult (Mad Max: Fury Road) as Lex Luthor, and an ensemble cast that includes Grillo as Rick Flag Sr., Edi Gathegi (For All Mankind) as Mister Terrific, Isabela Merced (Alien: Romulus) as Hawkgirl, Anthony Carrigan (Barry) as Metamorpho, Nathan Fillion (The Suicide Squad) as the Guy Gardner Green Lantern, and María Gabriela de Faría (Deadly Class) as The Authority’s Angelica Spica, a.k.a. the Engineer.
Tudyk, who voices the radioactive supervillain Dr. Phosphorus in Creature Commandos, has a secret role in Superman as a different character. A prolific voice actor who has voiced animal sidekicks in the Disney animated movies Moana, Raya and the Last Dragon, and Encanto, Tudyk may be voicing Krypto the Superdog. Gunn revealed the first look at the Kryptonian canine inspired by his rescue dog, Ozu.
“Krypto, that’s been something that’s just been amazing. We’ve been working with him in the edit. He’s an incredible part of the story to me personally,” said Gunn. “When I was writing the screenplay, he came in and kind of changed everything up.”
Gunn’s Superman movie wrapped filming in late July and is now “deep in the process of editing.”
Corenswet is “going to f—ing blow people away,” Gunn added. “He is the movie star that everyone just dreams he could possibly be. I don’t think anyone really understands the depth of this guy’s talent dramatically, comedically. He’s the best physical action star I’ve probably ever worked with… I feel good about it, and I’m really hard on stuff, so it’s been fantastic.”
Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow
The second movie in the DCU is Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, which stars Milly Alcock (House of the Dragon) as Superman’s cousin, Kara Zor-El, one of the few survivors of the destruction of the planet Krypton. Based on the eight-issue series of the same name by writer Tom King (Batman) and artist Bilquis Evely (Wonder Woman), Craig Gillespie (I, Tonya and Cruella) is directing from a script by Ana Nogueria.
The Supergirl movie is “a completely different, unique take on a superhero,” Gunn said, adding that Nogueria “came in, and she pitched the story to me of Supergirl, and it was just one of the best pitches I’ve ever heard, and she immediately wrote it. She came in with the first draft that was great, and it’s just gotten better and better. Then Craig has been incredibly easy to work with, and I can’t wait for that to come out.”
It was also revealed that the movie, which will begin filming in January 2025 in the UK, is currently screen-testing actors for the role of Ruthye Marye Knoll, the alien girl who puts a bounty on Krem of the Yellow Hills (played by The Old Guard‘s Matthias Schoenaerts), and embarks on a star-spanning adventure across the galaxy with Supergirl and Krypto to avenge her slain father in the comic book.
HBO’s Lanterns
Gunn provided an update on Lanterns, which follows new Green Lantern recruit John Stewart (the recently cast Aaron Pierre) and Lantern legend Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler), two intergalactic cops drawn into a dark, earth-based mystery as they investigate a murder in the American heartland. HBO is producing the series in association with Warner Bros. Television and DC Studios.
Pierre, best known for his roles in TV’s Krypton and Netflix’s Rebel Ridge, “is somebody who I’ve wanted to work together with for a long time,” Gunn said. “People don’t know, but he was almost cast as Adam Warlock [in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3]. He’s an amazing actor, and I just really admired him from the beginning of his career. Seeing him read with Kyle was one of those miraculous moments. I don’t care what they’re saying, I just love what they’re saying together.”
The live-action Green Lantern TV series was conceived during a summit with the DCU writers’ room, which includes Gunn, Drew Goddard (Marvel’s Daredevil), Jeremy Slater (Marvel Studios’ Moon Knight), Christina Hodson (The Flash movie), Christal Henry (HBO’s Watchmen), and comic book writer Tom King, who co-wrote Lanterns with Chris Mundy (Ozark, True Detective) and Damon Lindelof (Lost, The Leftovers).
“When we first started the DCU, the first couple of weeks of heading this out, we got together with a group of writers, and Tom King was one of those writers, and we were in this room, and we came up with sort of this concept for Lanterns,” Gunn said. “It’s a much more very grounded series, a very real series, which is a strange thing to say about a Green Lanterns show. But it’s going to be something like nobody’s ever seen before.”
Gunn added that Mundy, Lindelof, and King are overseeing Lanterns, which is preparing to shoot and “it’s been amazing.”
DC Studios’ Creature Commandos premieres Dec. 5 on Max; Superman opens only in theaters July 11, 2025.