The Skydance merger has led to yet another huge shake-up. Last Friday, Skydance co-CEOs David Ellison and Ynon Kreiz went to the Warner Bros lot and personally fired James Gunn and Peter Safran as co-CEOs of DC Studios. Gunn and Safran will be out of DC Studios on December 1st, after four years of helming the studio. The Hollywood Reporter says that the shake-up came as a real shock, because Safran and Gunn believed their jobs were safe within the merger.

DC Studios heads James Gunn and Peter Safran were feeling pretty secure under the new Skydance regime.

After surviving a merger that claimed the jobs of celebrated Warner Bros. heads Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy, the duo were basking in the modest success of Clayface, a horror movie released Oct. 21 that passed $100 million globally on a $44 million budget. There was even talk of doing more spooky, slimmed-down DC movies.

Gunn had also wrapped production on Man of Tomorrow, his sequel to Superman that is heading for a July 2027 release, and sources say he was in the midst of writing a third installment as part of plan to make a trilogy and release a Superman movie every two years, maybe even morphing the franchise into a Justice League teamup.

Then came Friday, Nov. 6, when Skydance co-CEOs David Ellison and Ynon Kreiz arrived at Gunn and Safran’s offices on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank. There, according to sources, the DC heads were told that despite previous assurances they would be part of the new Skydance mega-studio, Ellison and Kreiz had a change of plans. And now, after four years as two of the most visible faces in comic book films and TV, they were out.

And their replacement was surprising. It wasn’t a splashy C-suiter or an exec recently ousted amid Hollywood consolidation. It was Jeremy Latcham, a mild-mannered producer who was once a key member of Marvel Studios’ exec team before moving to Texas to go independent.

[From THR]

While I have little interest in DC Studios, this feels more like David Ellison’s commitment to being a terrible CEO and a full chaos agent. From what I’ve seen, that man has zero business sense or creative instinct. While the trade papers are emphasizing that this shake-up came as a complete shock to Safran and Gunn, Gunn posted a farewell message on Instagram today in which he expressed relief at no longer being a C-suite guy.

James Gunn wasn’t entirely happy as DC Studios co-chief anyway. That’s according to Gunn, who posted a farewell message on Instagram in the wake of the surprising news that he and Peter Safran were exiting the top studio roles and Marvel veteran Jeremy Latcham was taking over.

The Superman and Guardians of the Galaxy director expressed eagerness to return to full-time creative work rather than split his attention with managing a studio.

“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,” he wrote. “I dislike the at-times corporate nature of the job (thanks to Peter for taking the brunt of that) … And the thing my ADHD hyperfocus has had the most difficulty with has been dividing my time between projects I’m incredibly passionate about and the ones I’m not so much and all the things I have to do as a studio head … So, yes, I will miss the people around me, and 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.”

[From THR]

That’s a silver lining for DC fans – Gunn hated being the boss and he wants to go back to filmmaking full time. Still, this has turned into a major industry story.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.