If you’ve been following any of the recent drama behind the Warner Brothers buyout, you probably saw that some big news was dropped yesterday with the company accepting a bid valued at $82.7B from streaming powerhouse Netflix. With Warner Brothers being a theatrical powerhouse and Netflix being an at-home streaming service, what does this mean for the future of the DCU in theaters? Well, from what I can tell, it shouldn’t change a whole lot.

With Superman already proving to be a box office success, and with Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow and Clayface both on deck for James Gunn’s DCU, having a company like Netflix enter the picture could potentially throw off all current plans as well as any future plans Gunn may have had. However, from what some websites are reporting, that may not be the case. According to a reputable Twitter account ‘Superman Saga News’, it looks as if Warner Brothers Discovery President David Zaslav will remain in place and will continue to operate separately from Netflix to produce their own television and theatrical releases, and the DCU falls definitively under that umbrella:

That information was via the Financial Times, which is a trusted source and if they say that Warner Brothers Discovery will remain in place, I am inclined to believe it. Along with that information comes the implicit assurance that co-CEOs of DC Studios, James Gunn and Peter Safran, will remain in place. I feel safe making the assumption that a lot of the Netflix deal had to do with acquiring and consolidating HBO Max, a rival streaming platform, into the current Netflix platform. Netflix has a large library of original content, but a deal with Warner Brothers would allow them to both use the theatrical portion of the company to break into cinemas as well as doubling the size of their streaming platform. It would, in the grand scheme of things, work directly against them two-fold to do anything to alter the current course that DC Studios is on, which includes major properties coming to both theaters and the HBO Max streaming service.

Along with the slate of films currently being produced and any future theatrical releases, Gunn and Safran’s DCU also includes some major titles coming to streaming – Lanterns coming to the platform in 2026 will follow well known Green Lantern alias’ Hal Jordan and partner John Stewart for the first time since Ryan Reynolds portrayed the character all the way back in 2011. This alone is a huge endeavor for DC, but add in other properties such as John Cena’s Peacemaker, the animated Creature Commandos, and potential Penguin season 2, that’s almost an even 50/50 split for DC studios between theaters and streaming.

One of the major pinch points when it came to the Warner Brothers buyout was how the DCU, which is only still just establishing itself, would be handled. We just recently reported on Paramount already meeting with other creatives outside of the Gunn/Safran duo in anticipation of Warner Brothers accepting their initial offer, with other outlets reporting that Paramount isn’t going to take this bidding loss lightly, but it almost sounded like if Paramount had their way Gunn and Safran would lose some – if not all – creative control over their own universe. I would even wager a bet that Gunn and Safran remaining in control was one of the major negotiation points for the buyout, and Paramount going over their head to already start scouting other DCU stories may have worked directly against them winning the bid. With Netflix and WBD remaining separate operationally as a major part of the deal, it was almost certainly a significant point of discussion and with DC being such a major box office draw for Warner Brothers it was most likely a main negotiation factor that helped lead Netflix to winning the bid.

So for now we are not sure how this whole thing is going to play out since this deal went through literally yesterday and these kind of billion dollar acquisitions can take upwards of months to years to finalize, and it does not sound like rival bidder Paramount is going to make sealing this deal very easy. For now, we can still expect the next few DC movies to come out as planned, and if Netflix does end up finalizing this deal, I would actually be surprised if it didn’t actually allow for more creative freedom between both theatrical and streaming properties. Historically with the DCU, such as in the case of the CW’s Arrowverse and the DCEU, it was fractured because of the issues with the CW, which is partially owned by CBS and had a completely different thought process when it came to crossing over their properties with the movies during the 2010’s. There were a ton of factors involved at the time, but not having every facet of the creative studios working without conflict of interest did not work in anyone’s favor. Now, with all proprieties remaining under the same creative umbrellas, it might actually lead to even more creative cohesiveness. At the very least, it shouldn’t be detrimental.

Source: Superman Saga News Twitter