Even though it’s going to be the biggest talking point on the pop culture calendar by far, we suspect that Dwayne Johnson won’t be keeping his ear to the ground to hear what James Gunn and Peter Safran have planned for the DCU.
To be fair, why would he? The actor and producer spent 15 years trying to get Black Adam off the ground, only to see it land with a thud at the box office, which led to his immediate exile from the franchise after one mediocre movie. Not a great return given the levels of hype he’d been drumming up prior to release, but roasting The Rock has become a favored pastime of the DC faithful.
Ahead of the announcements coming later on, social media trolls took a brief moment to reflect on how Black Adam tried and utterly failed in the most embarrassing way possible to change the hierarchy of power.
We all knew this was coming, especially when the early indicators are that Gunn and Safran couldn’t care less about how big the stars are, or what the most vocal subset of supporters want to see. The new co-CEOs are doing it their way without paying heed to the outside noise, which is absolutely the right way to go about it.
Pandering to fans is fine on occasion, but making it the foundation of an entire shared universe is a risky gambit, even if it’s inevitable that there’s going to be a lot of sour faces when the initial wave of projects become common knowledge.