James Gunn Reveals Disappointing Update on Big DCU Movie, Casting Doubt on Its Future

The DCU is full of upcoming movies and shows. Superman has already arrived, and it’s doing great, both at the box office and with critics. Fans are now waiting for Supergirl, which is coming next year with Milly Alcock in the lead role and Jason Momoa playing Lobo.

After that, more projects are on the way. New movies featuring Wonder Woman, Batman, and the Teen Titans are in development. Scripts for Swamp Thing, Sgt. Rock, and Clayface are also being worked on, and there are even early plans for films about Bane, Deathstroke, and a new Justice League.

But in the middle of all this news, one project seems to be fading from view. That movie is ‘The Authority.’

Back in January 2023, James Gunn and Peter Safran revealed their first big list of DCU projects, and ‘The Authority’ was one of them. The film was supposed to focus on a superhero team originally created by Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch.

These characters started out in WildStorm comics, but later became part of the DC Comics universe. Gunn had been excited about this movie from the start, calling it a personal project, and even worked on its outline with other DC writers. But by early 2025, Gunn admitted that the project had hit some problems. The movie was described as “very big,” and the script wasn’t coming together as planned.

In a recent episode of the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Gunn gave fans another disappointing update. When asked about ‘The Authority,’ he said that the movie’s writer had been moved to work on another DCU film instead.

“The writer moved on to another movie in the DCU that I think he’s really killing at right now.”

This statement suggests that the future of ‘The Authority’ is uncertain. It’s unclear if or when work on the film will continue.

When the movie was first announced, Gunn explained that the team would be a group of heroes who believe the world is completely broken and think the only way to fix it is to take matters into their own hands.

He said they might even go as far as “killing people, destroying heads of state, changing governments, you know, whatever they want to do to make the world better.” Safran compared them to Jack Nicholson’s character in A Few Good Men, saying the team would be morally complex.

There is still a small connection to ‘The Authority’ in the DCU, though. In the new Superman movie, fans already met one member of the team. María Gabriela de Faría played Angela Spica, also known as The Engineer.

Her character is connected to Lex Luthor and uses nanotechnology built into her body to give her special powers. According to Gunn, she has “an edge.” This introduction in Superman seemed like a setup for the planned Authority film. But after Gunn’s recent update, whether that movie will actually happen remains unclear.

For now, fans will have to wait and see if ‘The Authority’ gets back on track or quietly disappears.

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