DC Studios co-CEO James Gunn recently announced the upcoming slate of fresh DC Television shows and flicks, which mark the ‘first chapter’ from the modern DC Universe, titled ‘Gods and Monsters’. In his presentation, Gunn spoke of the desire to keep every piece of storytelling connected, with animated shows feeding into live action, and every actor maintaining their roles across these mediums. According to Gunn, video games are also being included in these plans.
While no video games were announced as part of the ‘Chapter One’ slate, it does appear Gunn has major plans for them to be part of the new DC story.
Notably, the DC Studios vision is largely inspired by the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe – but while game titles are part of Marvel’s current plans, they are disconnected from their movie counterparts.
This is probably as a result of quantity of reasons – the complications of maintain ‘canon’ across multiple different teams, the difficulty of creating video games, and also the desire for new creative stories and voices – but whatever the case, Marvel has typically avoided modern tie-in games.
DC appears to be taking a different approach.
‘Gaming is a huge a part of what we’re doing, and everything we do at DC comes through us,’ Peter Safran, co-CEO of DC Studios recently told media, per SlashFilm. ‘Gaming is simply some of it, but it’s an area that people love, and we think might be really expanded upon.’
So far, plans of these tie-in game titles haven't been explained – nor has got the impact of the decision on already-announced properties, like Monolith’s Wonder Woman. Given this game began production before Gunn took over control at DC Studios, it likely exists in a nebulous realm.
Gunn has provided an ‘out’ of these projects by establishing there is going to be non-canon stories released under the ‘DC Elseworlds’ brand – like The Batman and Joker 2 – but it’s unclear if this will extend to game titles.
Whatever the case, it seems the brand new declaration from DC Studios will create a spot of complication for studios currently focusing on DC video games, because the new ruling effectively renders all stories non-canon to the ‘main’ era of the DCU. We’ll learn more about how these changes will be implemented because the first chapter of DC Studios begins, beginning 2025.
The next major DC gaming to release, Suicide Squad: Get rid of the Justice League, will not be part of the modern DCU.
