A 6-year resident of DC’s overcrowded development hell may have finally been put out of its misery and permanently killed

Looking back at the first decade of the DCEU, it’s incredible to think that the franchise announced just as many projects that never got made as it did those that actually managed to make it to the big screen.

For every Zack Snyder trilogy, Wonder Woman duology, or iteration of the Suicide Squad, there’s a standalone Cyborg story, Green Lantern Corps, or New Gods that never escaped development hell. One of the most profile residents was Nightwing, but it sounds as though the project has finally been dragged around the back of company headquarters and put out of its misery.

The Tomorrow War and Renfield director Chris McKay was announced to be directing in early 2017… and that’s about as far as it got. To his credit, the filmmaker refused to abandon all hope and regularly confirmed he’d love to get the chance to make it a reality, but The Wrap’s Umberto Gonzalez has since offered the succinct summation of “that project is dead” on social media.

To be fair, with James Gunn introducing his own version of the extended Batman family in The Brave and the Bold, Nightwing‘s chances of survival could generously be described as slim to nonexistent. McKay deserves credit for clinging onto any semblance of belief that it might end up coming together in some way, shape, or form, but he was one of the very few left who genuinely believed it was a possibility.

Chalk up another one to add to the discard pile, then, with the decade-long superhero sandbox still managing to kill off prospective new additions despite the fact Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is quite literally the only one still to release.