‘You can reboot the universe and introduce a new cast that way’: James Gunn’s critics will be thrilled to know the Zack Snyder was once planning his own overhaul of the DCU

The “rivalry” between James Gunn and Zack Snyder is entirely fabricated and exists only inside the heads of the latter’s supporters and the former’s critics, who often happen to be the exact same group of people.

Take a glance at the internet on any given day and you’ll discover outrage and apathy in equal measure as Gunn picks and chooses what is and isn’t canon while laying the groundwork for the DCU, all while the SnyderVerse and the old DCEU begin to vanish into nothingness forevermore.

And yet, regular Snyder collaborator Jay Olivia revealed to Inverse the franchise’s initial architect was planning his very own reboot anyway, something that’ll no doubt stoke the fires of fury once more.

“At the ending of Zack’s Darkseid quadrilogy, or whatever, we would end up with a Justice League Unlimited version of the SnyderVerse. And then you flip it. You do Flashpoint Paradox. Everybody who’s friends are now enemies, and it’s a world that you don’t want to live in. You can reboot the universe and introduce a new cast that way. Because after 10 years, the actors need to go onto something else.”

In essence, the Flashpoint adaptation – not the mangled version we ended up with this summer – would have reset the entire DC timeline and allowed a new revolving door of stars to come in and carry on telling new stories in a reality that was still technically canon, but adjacent to what had come before. Sound familiar or similar to anything going on to anyone?