Since taking over the reins at DC Studios, it's been full steam ahead for co-chiefs James Gunn and Peter Safran. So far we've had Creature Commandos hit Max back in December and we've got the new Superman film flying into theaters this July.
As the DC Universe continues to grow through film and television, there's another untapped medium right now: video games. Of course, there's a huge DC presence through the gaming industry with franchises like Batman: Arkham, Injustice, and DC Universe Online. But when it comes to the rebooted DC Universe, nothing official has been announced yet. But that doesn't mean work isn't being done behind the scenes.
During a recent DC Studios presentation, Gunn revealed that the first game based on the DC Universe is still "a couple of years" away from being revealed.
“Yeah, it's a couple years, but we've had some pretty active involvement in some stuff coming up,” Safran added. “It's really interesting.”
Talking a bit about the process that goes into developing video games, Gunn and Safran revealed that everything DC, from movies to video games, now runs through the two of them. They're working closely with WB Games development teams such as NetherRealm Studios, creators of Mortal Kombat and the DC fighting series Injustice, as well as Rocksteady Studios, the studio responsible for creating the Batman: Arkham series.
“We work incredibly closely with JB Perrette [CEO and President, Global Streaming and Games], who runs that division, and it's really the first time it's ever been this way at Warner Brothers,” Safran explained. “James and I sit with literally the guys that run the studios underneath JB, whether it's NetherRealm or whether it's Rocksteady, sit with them and talk about characters and stories that we're interested in and that they're interested in.”
“We see designs for the projects in their very earliest stages. We talk about those," Gunn added. "We talk about when they're talking about what the story might be, we say, ‘Well, maybe you want to go this way because we're planning on maybe doing something with this character and so forth and so on,’ and help to deal with that.”
“But it's been great, and we've enjoyed it enormously,” Safran continued. “Everything had been so siloed, and now that's completely broken down, and it's been great. Because it also applies to consumer products and experiences and everything that DC touches runs up through us now, which is awesome.”
It's been a rocky past couple of months for Warner Bros. Games, which is coming off the commercial flop of Rocksteady's Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, and the disappointing shutdown of the crossover fighting game MultiVersus. As a result, the publisher has said there will be an increased focus on what it deems its four most successful brands: Mortal Kombat, Game of Thrones, Harry Potter/Hogwarts Legacy, and DC, "in particular Batman."
Again nothing official has been announced yet, but there have been reports that Rocksteady is now working on a single-player Batman game, but it's supposedly still years away. It's unclear if this will be a new Batman: Arkham installment or something related to the DCU. A more recent update suggested that Rocksteady was developing a new game based on the Batman Beyond animated series exclusively for PlayStation.