Warner Bros. has been pinching pennies left, right, and center following the company’s recent merger with Discovery, and as a result, DCU fans are growing concerned that James Gunn won’t get the financial backing to match his creative vision.
Having unceremoniously ditched Batgirl as both a cost-cutting measure and a face-saving exercise after the almost-completed blockbuster was deemed to be so terrible it would have actively hurt the brand, the floodgates were then opened for new CEO David Zaslav to begin trimming the content herd, leaving countless in-development and on-air projects on the chopping block.
Being given the carte blanche to develop and oversee an entire 10-year slate alongside Peter Safran would indicate that the money men have confidence in the DC Studios co-CEOs to deliver the goods, but that hasn’t prevented a certain subset of worriers from airing their concerns that the belts may be tightened so significantly that it could hamper the franchise as a whole.
Not to turn everything into a Marvel comparison, but the MCU has become increasingly infamous for churning out $200 million productions that could generously be described as uneasy on the eye, and it’s not as if Warner Bros. Discovery is going to whittle down the budgets to demand that something like Superman: Legacy or The Brave and the Bold be made for the cost of an intimate independent drama, but there’s definitely a happy medium in the investment-to-execution ratio.
The severe lack of a marketing push for Shazam! Fury of the Gods underlines that the finances aren’t in particularly robust shape, but there are always going to be a few bodies left on the floor in the wake of a corporate bloodbath, and you’d expect the DCU’s marketability and earning potential to have it earmarked as safe.
