Rumors are swirling again around James Gunn and his growing empire at DC Studios. The latest comes from The Hot Mic’s Jeff Sneider, who claims Gunn might actually direct The Brave and the Bold. This wouldn’t be surprising given Gunn’s relentless appetite for control over every creative corner of the DCU. He’s already admitted he wants to direct a Batman movie one day. Now that he’s in charge, it looks like he might finally give himself the green light.
Officially, Andy Muschietti is still attached to direct The Brave and the Bold, but that attachment looks shakier by the day. Ever since The Flash bombed and reset the course of the DC Universe, Muschietti’s name has been more placeholder than plan. Under Gunn’s rule, directors seem to come and go—especially if their projects don’t fit his sensibilities or perform to his expectations.
It’s worth noting that Sneider was also the one who broke that Christina Hodson was writing the script for The Brave and the Bold—a scoop that was confirmed by the big trades 24 hours later. So his reporting shouldn’t be dismissed outright. It’s worth noting that Hodson also was one of the writers responsible for The Flash (which Gunn praised) Birds of Prey, and that aborted Batgirl movie, so I’m not really getting my hopes up here.
But the bigger story might be Gunn himself. He’s long complained that Batman is his “biggest issue” in the DCU and described how hard it is to differentiate his version from Matt Reeves’ take. According to Gunn, Batman can’t just appear because he’s “famous”—he needs a reason to exist within Gunn’s carefully crafted sandbox. That sort of comment reveals plenty about Gunn’s mindset: every creative move has to reinforce his personal vision and brand, rather than serve the mythos itself.
The irony is hard to ignore. Gunn has spent years ridiculing past Batman films, taking shots at creators who built the legacy he’s now attempting to rewrite. “Poorly written” and “one of the most boring films ever” is how he once described Tim Burton’s Batman. He mocked Jack Nicholson’s Joker, saying it felt like “Jack Nicholson in The Shining with shitty clown makeup.” He wrapped it up by calling Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins “not even really good,” though he grudgingly admitted it was “better” than Burton’s effort. Those comments, long deleted from his social media, aren’t easy to forget.
So here we are: a man who dismissed the classics, now deciding what the future of the Dark Knight should look like. If Gunn does take the director’s chair, expect a version of Batman that looks less like a brooding detective and more like another chapter in Hollywood’s ongoing identity reconstruction; a symbol remodeled to fit the new orthodoxy of diversity checkboxes, corporate sensitivity, and ideological storytelling. In other words, one more casualty in the entertainment industry’s slow-motion collapse under its own forced virtue.
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