DC Studios co-CEO Peter Safran says they are trying to ‘minimize audience confusion’

Marvel Studios once set a high standard for how superhero movies should be made. The standard used to be so high that now they even have a hard time achieving it themselves. But they’ve made dozens of movies and TV shows that closely align with each other, they’ve created a shared universe that many fans have enjoyed watching.

Co-CEO of DC Studios James Gunn AND Peter Safran they’ll take a different approach when building their DC Cinematic Universe. According to Safran, the DCU they’re building won’t depend so much on crossovers and interconnected storytelling. He tells Vanity Fair they are trying to minimize confusion for the public. He said:

“The good news is, if you haven’t seen anything we’ve done before, you can watch Superman Legacy, you can watch Creature Commandos, you can watch Peacemaker Season 2, and you can watch Blue Beetle. minimize audience confusion and maximize their enjoyment”.

You know, not everyone needs to emulate with Marvel. It’s okay to make a single comic-inspired movie that doesn’t have to connect to anything else. It’s okay to make a comic book movie and not have a sequel! Sometimes you can only tell one big story and that’s all a certain character needs.

I love that Gunn and Safran are trying to simplify things a bit in terms of the DC stories they tell. But, while they’re trying to keep crossovers and interconnected storytelling to a minimum, it’s something they’re still going to explore and play with.

Gunn went on to compare the DC Universe to the Marvel Universe and how the DCU will create more inventive storytelling, saying:

“If you look at the MCU, there are very few traditional superheroes. There has never been a guy with a secret identity here until Spider-Man in the MCU. Their cap has been transformed into a soldier even though he wears a mask. Iron Man came out at the end of the first Iron Man because they don’t want to deal with the whole secret identity thing, but there’s a little bit more of a fantasy element to the DCU, because there are these amazing superheroes and for me, there’s Superman and Clark Kent, they’re two different characters and you have to find a way to deal with them that’s as grounded within this DC world as possible.

“One of the things that I love about DC, that excites me about DC, is that it’s kind of another alternate history. It’s Gotham City and Metropolis and Star City and Bludhaven, and all these different places in this other reality, and it makes it kind of like Westeros in some ways. I love it in that sense. I love that we get to do real worldbuilding in DC, it’s not just ‘we’re throwing some superheroes to Earth.’ I think right now, this is one of the fundamental differences”.

One thing’s for sure, Gunn and Safran have their work cut out for them. They have to earn the trust of the fans after a long period of Warner Bros. making bad decisions that hurt the franchise.

The DC Universe officially kicks off with Commandos creaturewhich has yet to set a release date, and will be the first DC film under Gunn’s reign Superman: Legacywhich enters theaters July 11, 2025.