Despite Supergirl’s Failure, It’s A Bad Idea To Replace James Gunn

Supergirl has just barely crawled past $100 million at the global box office, less than a sixth of what its predecessor Superman did. It is possibly going to end on par with some of the worst DCU disasters like Blue Beetle and well, James Gunn’s own Suicide Squad movie.

There has been a post-mortem about Supergirl which describes clashes between director Craig Gillespie and DC Studios head Gunn, warring cuts of the film that ultimately went with the studio’s version. But at that point, nothing was going to double the returns of Supergirl, and even if so, that still would have been a disappointing total.

Many are now questioning Gunn’s ability to lead this DC universe into the future as its grand architect, and to some degree, understandably so. But the current state of WB and DC is likely to be harmed more by booting Gunn out (his contract is reportedly up in the next year or two) and replacing him.

Starting over, again, would be a nightmare. Either you have to do a third universe reboot in the last five years, or you have to have someone else working within the first few years of Gunn’s setup, which I imagine could be a sort of Disney New Star Wars Trilogy situation of disjointed cooks.

Gunn has proven to be very good at a few things, namely producing high-quality superhero content himself, be it animated series or live-action films as a director or writer, and I would argue casting, his choices for the Superman cast being spot on, creating an iconic Peacemaker team and Milly Alcock as Supergirl was not on the top ten list of that movie’s problems.

The next slated projects do not seem like bad ideas. Lanterns, again, seems well-cast, and has the potential to be a solid introduction to that important corner of the universe. Clayface has good early reception and a horror legend on board in Mike Flanagan. After that, the next mainline movie is Gunn’s own Man of Tomorrow, which, like all of his other superhero projects, is likely to be good.