James Gunn is out at DC Studios. A Marvel veteran takes over.

James Gunn and Peter Safran are stepping down as co-heads of DC Studios, replaced by Marvel veteran Jeremy Latcham beginning Dec. 1. The Hollywood Reporter reported the news Monday.

Skydance, which now oversees DC through its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, appointed Latcham to lead the division’s film, television and animation slate. Variety confirmed that Gunn and Safran will leave their leadership posts and return to creative work.

The shakeup ends a four-year run that began with fanfare in 2022, when Warner Bros. hired Gunn and Safran to reboot DC after the Zack Snyder era and build a unified universe to rival Marvel. It hands one of Hollywood’s most valuable superhero libraries to a Kevin Feige protégé just as the new DCU’s slate is hitting screens, and it raises the question of whether the plan Gunn pitched survives without Gunn in charge.

Gunn and Safran took over DC Studios in late 2022, after the Snyder-led films had run their course and Matt Reeves’ standalone “The Batman” had shown there was life in the property outside a shared universe. The studio was a rebrand of the old DC Films division, and the pair were given the title of co-chairs and co-CEOs with authority over film, television and animation. Their mandate was to do for DC what Feige had done for Marvel: a single connected continuity, overseen by people who understood the characters.

The slate they announced, branded “Chapter 1: Gods and Monsters,” was meant to stretch over a decade. “Superman” opened in 2025 to strong reviews and solid business, re-establishing the character as the line’s center. “Supergirl” followed and bombed at the box office, a critical and commercial miss that put pressure on the whole enterprise. “Clayface,” directed by James Watkins, has been the bright spot of the fall, with strong reviews and money in the bank.

On television, “Peacemaker” returned for a second season, “Lanterns” landed on HBO, and the animated “Creature Commandos” ran on Max. A sequel to “Superman,” titled “Man of Tomorrow,” is in post-production for release next summer, and the TV spinoff “The People v. Gorilla Grodd” is also in post. Gunn and Safran remain producers on “The Batman: Part II,” which is dated for 2028.

Latcham is not a stranger to any of this. He joined Marvel Studios in 2004 as one of its earliest employees and rose to senior vice president of production and development, working as a Feige deputy and earning credits on “Iron Man,” “Iron Man 2,” “The Avengers,” “Guardians of the Galaxy,” “Avengers: Age of Ultron” and “Spider-Man: Homecoming.”

He worked with Gunn on the first “Guardians” film, the 2014 movie that made Gunn an A-list director. Polygon reported that Latcham will report to Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein, the co-chairs of Skydance Motion Picture Group, a change from the Gunn-Safran era when the pair reported directly to Skydance chairman David Ellison.

Whether Gunn and Safran jumped or were pushed is the question Hollywood is asking. Ellison flew to the set of “Man of Tomorrow” this year in what was read as a vote of confidence, and the pair presented their long-term plan to him in recent weeks.

Sources told THR that Ellison had told them to keep doing what they were doing. Gunn told the trade last month that Ellison “knows everything” and had “been great with us.” The exit, announced the next month, has not been explained beyond the official statements.

Gunn posted a long statement on social media after the news broke. He thanked Safran and the fans, called the job “trying, to say the least,” and said he dislikes “the at-times corporate nature of the job.”

He said his ADHD hyperfocus made it hard to divide his time between projects he cared about and the ones he did not, and that he had stolen time from his family over four years. “I’m also incredibly relieved and excited to get back to pure filmmaking,” he wrote. Variety published the full statement.

He confirmed that “Man of Tomorrow” is still coming next summer and that he and Safran have been “engaged on another DC project” he is writing. The characters they set up “will live on,” he said. Safran, a prolific producer on DC and horror titles, has not posted a separate statement.

Skydance chairman David Ellison and co-CEO Ynon Kreiz said in a joint statement that Gunn and Safran “launched a new era for DC Studios and led it through a period of real transformation.” Latcham called DC’s characters “among the most iconic in American popular culture” and said he was “excited and honored” to take over.

Gunn came up through low-budget genre filmmaking. He wrote for Troma Entertainment, scripted the 2002 “Scooby-Doo” and its sequel, and wrote the 2004 “Dawn of the Dead” remake before directing “Slither” (2006) and “Super” (2010).

“Guardians of the Galaxy” made his name at Marvel, and he returned to DC with “The Suicide Squad” (2021) and the “Peacemaker” series before taking the studio job. He was briefly fired from “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” in 2018 over old tweets that resurfaced, then rehired within months, an episode that made him a test case for how studios handle online campaigns against talent.

What I think

The corporate job was never going to fit Gunn. He is a filmmaker who built his career on oddball genre sensibility, and the DC Studios role asked him to be a manager, a politician and a brand steward. His own statement says as much. The relief in it is not performed.

The question is whether Latcham can hold the slate together. He has the résumé for it: nearly two decades inside the machine that built the MCU, and a working history with Gunn that goes back to “Guardians.” But Feige’s model worked because Feige stayed in the chair for 20 years. DC has now changed leadership three times in a decade, and each reset has cost the franchise momentum.

Gunn’s DCU is not fully launched yet. “Man of Tomorrow” arrives next summer, and if it lands, the universe he designed has a future with Latcham finishing it. If it does not, Latcham will be the third executive told to start over. The characters will outlast all of them. The plan might not.