James Gunn ‘Incredibly Relieved’ To Return To Filmmaking As He, Peter Safran Step Down As DC Studios Chiefs Amid Paramount Shakeup

The executive shakeup following Paramount’s $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery has reached DC Studios, where James Gunn and Peter Safran are stepping down as co-presidents after four years. Former Marvel executive Jeremy Latcham will take over as president and chief creative officer.

This latest upheaval is particularly surprising given that Gunn and Safran were explicitly included in Skydance’s new leadership team when the merger closed just one month ago. Their departure adds to a broad corporate restructuring that has already seen Warner Bros. film chiefs Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy leave the company, with Paramount veterans Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein taking their place.

Gunn and Safran were appointed in October 2022 to oversee DC’s film, television, and animation businesses. Gunn was tasked with creative direction while Safran oversaw business and production, with both reporting directly to then-Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav. In a lengthy Instagram post, Gunn acknowledged the difficulties of balancing filmmaking with the responsibilities that came with co-running a major studio, while crediting Safran with shouldering much of that burden:

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.

Gunn also confirmed that he and Safran remain involved with DC creatively, including an additional project he is currently writing. He also expressed relief at the prospect of returning to filmmaking full-time:

I will miss being the co-caretaker of these great characters, but I’m also incredibly relieved and excited to get back to pure filmmaking.

Their tenure included an ambitious reboot of DC’s film and television universe, with animation set to play a more interconnected role alongside live-action productions than it had in the past. Gunn’s original vision called for animated projects to share continuity with live-action titles, with actors voicing the same characters they portrayed on screen.

For DC’s animation operations, the leadership change raises fresh questions about the long-term strategy set up by Gunn and Safran. It’s an uncertainty shared across the newly combined Paramount and Warner Bros. businesses, as executives, filmmakers, and employees wait to see how things will shake out.