James Gunn and Peter Safran are leaving the top of DC Studios, and reports say HBO’s Lanterns won’t get a season 2 in the shake-up.
According to Variety and Forbes, the pair will step down as co-CEOs on 1 December 2026, with Marvel veteran Jeremy Latcham replacing them as president and chief creative officer. Skydance’s David Ellison and Ynon Kreiz announced the change on Monday, 9 November, just over a month after Skydance’s takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery closed in October. The Hollywood Reporter and Deadline also confirmed the move.
Latcham worked on Iron Man, Guardians of the Galaxy, Spider-Man: Homecoming, and The Avengers. He’ll lead DC’s film, TV, and animation slate and report to Skydance film co-chairs Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein. Gunn and Safran aren’t leaving entirely: they’ll stay on as producers on The Batman Part II, The People vs. Gorilla Grodd, and Man of Tomorrow. Tbreak covered the exit when it broke.
In an Instagram post that Variety quoted, Gunn wrote:
What only the closest people to me have known over the past four years is my time at DC Studios has been trying, to say the least.
James Gunn, co-CEO, DC Studios
What’s reported, not confirmed
Lanterns is the first reported casualty. The series isn’t expected to return, according to ComicBook.com, which cites an unnamed insider in Variety’s report who said the show isn’t “quite capturing the zeitgeist”. HBO hasn’t confirmed it. Safran said in October that season 2 wasn’t greenlit. Hours before that report, showrunner Chris Mundy put the odds of a return at 50/50.
The wider DCU may not survive either. Puck’s Matthew Belloni, quoted by Kotaku, says plans are “already afoot to dismantle much of what Gunn and Safran had plotted out” beyond Man of Tomorrow. According to Kotaku, an alleged Skydance insider also told Cosmic Book that David Corenswet could be unlikely to return as Superman in a third film. Nobody has confirmed either claim, though the news already has Zack Snyder fans pushing “#RestoreTheSnyderVerse”.
Gunn and Safran, who reported to David Zaslav, set out four years ago to unite DC under one creative vision. Superman made $618 million worldwide, according to Variety, but Supergirl bombed and Clayface performed modestly. According to Deadline, Gods and Monsters projects such as Waller, Paradise Lost, Booster Gold, and an Authority film fizzled.
Man of Tomorrow, which Gunn is finishing in post-production, is due in summer 2027. It’s also where Lanterns’ finale pointed John Stewart next.
