Skydance has removed James Gunn and Peter Safran from their posts as co-chairmen and co-CEOs of DC Studios, ending a four-year tenure that began with a hit Superman film and was, until recently, expected to survive the company's takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery.

Their replacement is Jeremy Latcham, a former Marvel Studios executive who helped launch the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Skydance Motion Picture Group announced the change on Nov. 9. Latcham takes over on Dec. 1 as president and chief creative officer of DC Studios, overseeing its film, television, and animation slate.

The move places Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, and the rest of the DC Comics roster under new creative control barely a month after Skydance closed its acquisition. It also resets a franchise strategy that Warner Bros. has now restarted twice in 13 years.

A reprieve that lasted a month

Paramount completed its takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery on Oct. 6 and renamed the combined company Skydance. Early reports indicated that Gunn and Safran would keep their jobs, even as Warner Bros. film chiefs Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy were expected to give way to Paramount's Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein.

That assurance did not hold. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Skydance chairman and CEO David Ellison and co-CEO Ynon Kreiz visited Gunn and Safran's office on Nov. 6 to deliver the news in person.

Gunn and Safran will continue to produce DC projects and are finishing post-production on Man of Tomorrow, the Superman sequel slated for July 2027. Latcham will report to Goldberg and Greenstein, now co-chairs of Skydance Motion Picture Group. The overlap makes for an unusual transition: when Man of Tomorrow reaches theaters in July 2027, it will do so under Latcham's watch even though the executives he replaces are the ones finishing its post-production.

"I've had the privilege to help bring some of the most celebrated superhero stories to life on the big screen, and I'm excited and honored for the opportunity to now lead DC Studios into its next era," Latcham said in a statement.

A $618 million start, then a flop

Gunn and Safran took charge of DC Studios on Nov. 1, 2022, hired to reboot the DC characters as a single connected universe. The appointment came months after Discovery merged with WarnerMedia to form Warner Bros. Discovery.

Gunn arrived as a proven voice in the genre. He wrote and directed all three Guardians of the Galaxy films for Marvel before making his DC debut with The Suicide Squad in 2021. Safran produced that film, other DC adaptations of the 2010s, and the Conjuring films for Warner Bros.' New Line Cinema.

Their first release, Gunn's Superman, opened to $217 million globally in July 2025 and finished with $618.7 million worldwide. It introduced David Corenswet as the Man of Steel and set up a wider universe of familiar DC characters.

The second did not soar. Supergirl, made for a reported $170 million, became one of DC Studios' worst opening-weekend flops this summer, grossing $126 million worldwide amid weak reviews.

The third paid off. Clayface, an R-rated body-horror film produced for a reported $44 million, opened at No. 1 and had grossed $109 million worldwide as of Nov. 8. On television, the pair delivered a second season of Peacemaker, the animated Creature Commandos, and HBO's Lanterns, a hit when it debuted in August.

Marvel's playbook, 18 years later

Latcham was part of the founding team at Marvel Studios under Kevin Feige. He worked on Iron Man, The Avengers, and Tom Holland's Spider-Man films, and he collaborated with Gunn on Guardians of the Galaxy. He left Marvel in 2017 to found Latcham Pictures, whose films include Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves and Bad Times at the El Royale. DC is his return to superheroes, and it repeats a familiar pattern: the franchise's reboot has now been entrusted twice to veterans of Marvel's operation—first to Gunn, who made his name writing and directing Guardians of the Galaxy, and now to Latcham, who was part of Marvel's setup from the beginning.

The task he inherits has defeated Warner Bros. before. The studio's first attempt at a Marvel-style connected universe, the DC Extended Universe, began with Zack Snyder's Man of Steel in 2013 and ended with Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom in 2023, after Gunn and Safran had already been hired to start over.

The decade in between produced uneven results, from Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Wonder Woman to The Flash and Black Adam. Unlike Marvel's tightly linked films, the DCEU fractured: Suicide Squad and The Suicide Squad are entirely separate movies released five years apart. Troubled productions and turnover behind the camera made matters worse. Fans campaigned for years after the 2017 theatrical Justice League until Warner Bros. released Snyder's original vision as Zack Snyder's Justice League in 2021.

Warner Bros. also kept certain DC stories outside the main universe. The CW's Arrowverse, including Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, and Black Lightning, built its own connected television world. On the big screen, 2019's Joker and 2022's The Batman stood apart from the DCEU. The split continued under Gunn and Safran: Joker: Folie à Deux arrived in 2024, while Matt Reeves' Batman films and HBO's The Penguin remain in their own world. John Cena's Peacemaker, meanwhile, carried over from the old universe into the new one.

What Latcham inherits

The near-term slate is set. Man of Tomorrow remains on the calendar, and Reeves' The Batman: Part II is still in production, with Steven Soderbergh recently brought in to shoot the remaining scenes. The series The People v. Gorilla Grodd is also in the works.

Beyond that, little is settled. It is not yet clear whether Corenswet's Superman will continue after Man of Tomorrow, whether Lanterns earns a second season, or whether Latcham starts over from scratch and hands fans another round of whiplash. Whether the universe Gunn and Safran built survives is a Riddler-worthy mystery.

Latcham helped build Hollywood's most successful franchise once. Nearly two decades after Iron Man, he will find out whether that origin story can be repeated—or whether the superhero universe no longer comes with a reliable playbook.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com.