Tweets. Getting My News From Tweets.

In the most annoying development of the ongoing "James Gunn takes over the (DC) universe" saga, the relevant news seems to ONLY be coming out in the form of tweets from Gunn and other players in the current reshuffle like Dwayne Johnson.

Tweets.

I am reduced to paying attention to the most annoying social media platform on the planet for news on the progress of the rebuild of the DC film and television.  It's more maddening than the news itself.  

But there is a bit of positive news coming out of at least one tweet this week.

James Gunn was asked:

"Hey James, you and Peter must be having tons of fun planning things out for the DCU (other than the Twitter crazies). Were any of the animated DC Shows like Justice League Unlimited and Young Justice an inspiration for you when planning out this universe?"

He answered with a single word:

"Definitely."

Now he could just be saying that there's a general influence of any one or many of the various animated projects that have come out of DC Comics properties, but I am hoping that his answer means that he is specifically taking cues from Justice League Unlimited and/or Young Justice.  Both properties are among the best versions of DC Comics superheroes in any media and using either or both as influence/starting point/blueprint to help shape a new DC Studios (much better name and assuming they link tv and film projects, much more logical) going forward is good news for most fans.

 

Batman and Robin, Green Arrow and Speedy, Aquaman and Aqualad and Flash and Kid Flash.

More than enough to jump-start a new universe.

Today's the day.

Both properties are among the best loved by the majority of DC Comics fans and assuming that his "definitely" isn't a semantic head fake, Gunn has made at least one good move to start.  If you started from the first episode of Young Justice, created those characters in live action and used a similar story line, it'd be a simple matter to spin individual hero's movies out of that framework.

Gunn also confirmed that "Elseworlds" projects were "actively happening" but that could just refer to the current production of The Joker 2 that is underway as it is unlikely that version of the Joker would ever be folded in to a larger DC Universe.  "Elseworlds" is a line of comics that DC publishes where familiar heroes and villains are placed in non-canon adventures like Batman in a Victorian Era adventure in "Gotham By Gaslight".  Personally I'd love to see DC embrace at least one "Elseworlds" concept every year or two going forward, but they gotta get the horse out in front of the cart at the moment, so no rush.

As I've said before, Gunn and Safran are under no obligation to please me as a fan.  Their job is to create a new, stable mechanism to produce film and television based on DC Comics and make money from it.  Hopefully they choose to make content that I personally enjoy but only time will tell.  Learning that a couple of my personal favourite properties may be part of the framework they're putting together is potentially good news for me.  

Fingers, as always, crossed.