Given that yesterday was going to be the first time that Skydance was going to report earnings since the megastudio was minted last month you know it was going to be a big news day. That established, I’m not sure even the investment community was fully ready for the shots fired which DEADLINE’s dutiful Anthony D’Alessandro reported on yesterday morning:
In a seismic executive shuffle unlike anything Bruce Wayne could pull off at Wayne Enterprises, James Gunn and Peter Safran are leaving their posts as co-CEOs and Chairmen of DC Studios, jobs which they’ve held for the past four years…The dynamic duo will continue to produce on various DC projects and are returning to their full-time creative work.
Taking over the comic book entertainment label as President and Chief Creative Officer is former Marvel SVP of Production and Development, Jeremy Latcham. He starts in the position on Dec. 1 and reports to Skydance Motion Picture Group co-chairs Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein.
Suffice to say it sure looks Gunn is more relieved than surprised by this turn of events. Witness what he chose to share publicly which gave D’Alessandro’s colleague Justin Kroll a chance to further increase corporate clicks before lunch:
“Oh, boy. What a four years.”…”I didn’t know if I wanted this job when it was offered to me, but I just couldn’t pass up the unique opportunity. I’m glad I took the job…There have been so many highs along the way – releasing Superman and Clayface, making Peacemaker, reading the scripts to The People Vs, the entire process of Man of Tomorrow, which thus far has been the best filmmaking experience of my life, and numerous other moments.”
(T)he best part of all has been working with Peter Safran, the smartest and most competent person I know. You’ve been the best partner a person could ask for, and, more so, a truly good friend.”…But 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. I dislike the at-times corporate nature of the job (thanks to Peter for taking the brunt of that). I’m always a very hard worker, but as a filmmaker I would at least get to take short breaks to unwind, and I’ve stolen even that time from both myself and my loved ones over the past four years (Jenn, I love you and I’m sorry and you don’t need to feel guilty for being the happiest of all people that I’m no longer doing this job).
Oh boy, indeed. That’s effectively a middle finger the size of the Incredible Hulk’s in the eye of not only the starry-eyed schmuck who apparently connived him into doing this at all, our ol’ friend Yosemite Zas, but also those of anyone involved at any level of the process of why studios even choose to give creatives the chance to have the keys to their kingdoms in the first place.
Here’s what David Ellison had to say about Ellison–and, for that matter, the now-departed Mike DeLuca and Pam Abdy’s endeavors which gave D’Alessandro a second big drop closer to sunset:
Ellison wasn’t shy in acknowledging that Paramount is in better financial waters going forward than Warner Bros on the feature side. Today’s earnings didn’t include the consolidated Warner Bros figures since the merger closed during Q4, just five weeks ago; still, Paramount brass painted a less-than-rosy picture of what’s around the corner…Said Ellison at the call’s onset, “The 2026 Paramount film slate is expected to generate $500 million more in lifetime profits than last year’s. We’ve now taken on another company with mixed results across the business…”
He added, “We do have some headwinds particularly in studios where Warner Bros film has underperformed this year and will weigh on Q4 results. We’ll apply the same playbook we did at Paramount: greenlighting more selectively, prioritizing profitable streaming growth over subscriber count, optimizing linear and driving efficiency through the cost structure.”
And for anyone who perhaps mistook this as letting them down nicely, the remarks of the beancounter-in-chief cemented exactly how far off from reality creative “visionaires” were:
Skydance CFO Dennis Cinelli drilled down further on the red ink from Warner Bros, which saw right before the merger closed a major bomb in the Tom Cruise-starring political satire Digger, which cost $160M before global P&A and yielded $50.3M in worldwide box office…It hasn’t been a great year at the box office for Warner Bros, with global box office misfires such as Supergirl, The Bride, Digger and no film grossing more than $100M domestic.
Translated: Don’t let the door hit your arrogant ass on the way out, Jimbo, and make sure you escort every single one of your arrogant money-losing posse safely off our lots as well.
Think that’s harsh? Take a gander at who the Skydancers are anointing as the new mayor of Gotham and Smallville, as described this morning by NEWSWEEK’s Megan Cartwright:
Jeremy Latcham, an early Marvel Studios executive who worked on Iron Man, The Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy, will become president and chief creative officer of DC Studios on December 1, according to a Skydance press release…Latcham joined Marvel Studios in 2004, before the Marvel Cinematic Universe existed. He eventually rose to senior vice president of production and development.
Latcham has publicly discussed his Christian faith and a filmmaking philosophy centered on redemption, heroism and stories capable of connecting with ordinary families… His experience with Iron Man became particularly important to that outlook. Latcham recalled his grandmother calling after the movie’s 2008 release to tell him that her church sermon had discussed Tony Stark‘s story of redemption. For Latcham, the fact that someone in Perkins, Oklahoma, could recognize that theme demonstrated how a superhero movie could reach audiences far outside Hollywood.
During his Marvel years, Latcham said he would sometimes ask himself: “I don’t know if my grandma would like that.” Rather than simply meaning that every movie needed to be suitable for grandparents, he described her as a stand-in for people outside the entertainment industry’s cultural bubble. “What does this [movie] say for a regular family?” he recalled asking in an interview with CBS News in July.
And it’s that sort of openness to looking beyond an insular slither of detached friends or even Comic-Con zealots that has me encouraged that this could very well be a positive sign.
I’ve conducted plenty of research projects where at the risk of redundancy we challenge people to share what they don’t know that they know. Step One is to put that question before enough representative folks who themselves are that. Step Two and beyond is to get them to reveal what are their passion points and their core values–avoiding the direct question as much as possible. More often than not, people love to their their aspirational selves on screens as both inspiration and escapism from their daily rituals. When we sort through the specific line items that resonate most being an upstanding moral compass with integrity and family values tend to rise to the tops of most lists. And not just in locales like Perkins, Oklahoma.
Sure, Latcham’s somewhat meager resume, plus his past associations with Ellison’s comrade in arms Ynon Kreiz, strongly suggests he will be much more malleable and subservient to the whims and desires of the Skydance brass than anyone with loyalty to Gunn would have been. But anyone who saw this year’s SUPERGIRL and saw the values reflected in what could be most diplomatically described as a detached entitled millennial with more emotion toward a dog than the human race–a plot point that was teased out even during the 2025 SUPERMAN reboot–would have some idea what form Gunn’s vision was taking. And with enough dailies already in for next summer’s MAN OF TOMORROW it’s fair to assume the powers that be have grave concerns there’s more of that ‘tude ahead. More to the point, the sort of ‘tude that Gunn chose to share in his exit statement.
As PAGE SIX HOLLYWOOD’s Ian Mohr recapped in his column released as this musing was being prepared, the receipts on all that were damning:
The Warner Bros.-housed studio released three films during Gunn and Safran’s time at the helm. Box-office performances ranged from promising (“Clayface”) to OK (“Superman”) to disastrous (“Supergirl”). Sources say “Supergirl” ultimately lost $135 million.
My own experience with executives who hail from creative-first backgrounds tend to be oblivious to the sorts of insights and experiences that Latcham describes. There’s little that’s been seen in practice or results that would indicate anything to the contrary. Intervention was warranted; arguably sooner than this. Knowing what I know about Kreiz, I suspect at least these questions will finally be asked. Given what we’ve discovered about Latcham, it sure sounds like he’ll at least be open to considering their responses. What a studio in turmoil ultimately needs is a surgeon’s scalpel, not a smoking Gunn.
Until next time…