Dwayne Johnson puts on a brave face and gets back to work as the DCU carries on without him

James Gunn and Peter Safran’s Chapter 1 – Gods & Monsters has finally been revealed to the world, and the irony hasn’t been lost on many DCU supporters that the new co-CEOs have swept in an instantly changed the hierarchy of power.

With the sole exception of Viola Davis’ Amanda Waller, every single film and television project announced as part of mainline continuity will feature a brand new name or rebooted character in the main role, while Matt Reeves’ The Batman: Part II and Todd Phillips Joker: Folie à Deux will operate independently under the Elseworlds label.

Gunn offered his thoughts on the Henry Cavill debacle, but nobody even bothered to ask about Dwayne Johnson or Black Adam, which embarrassingly failed to live up to the billing bestowed upon it by the leading man and producer. Nonetheless, The Rock remains a busy man, but it could be telling that he’s made a point of underlining that he’s back at work with his game face on mere hours after the DCU slate was unveiled.

Johnson has broadly addressed the Black Adam fiasco a couple of times, which involved some blatant rewriting of the history books, but it looks as though he’s keen to move on with his career and pretend his brief stint in the DCU never happened. It’s a pair of primary-colored blockbusters up next with Prime Video’s Red One and Netflix’s Red Notice sequels, so we can all just ignore that his short-lived stint as a superhero was all sizzle without a mere morsel of steak to show for it at the end of the day.