The industry verdict on James Gunn and Peter Safran is in, and it isn’t coming from YouTube channels or “toxic fandom.”
On Monday’s episode of The Town, Puck founding partner Matt Belloni and Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw ran through their mid-year winners and losers report for 2026, and the DC Studios co-heads got named the biggest losers in Hollywood.
Not Kathleen Kennedy (she made the list separately). Not Netflix’s co-CEOs (them too). The “obvious” pick, per Shaw: “James Gunn and Peter Safran, the DCU guys.”
Via WB
‘Clearly The Bomb Of The Year’
The hosts noted Supergirl is sitting at barely $100 million worldwide after two weekends: “Clearly the bomb of the year,” they say, and bigger than Masters of the Universe, “because nobody thought Masters of the Universe was really going to work other than maybe a couple people at Mattel and Amazon,” said Shaw.
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The numbers back the label, as we’ve been documenting: a $37 million domestic opening, a near 80% second-weekend collapse that ranks sixth-worst all time for a 3,000+ theater release, and a projected theatrical loss of $244.3 million against $295 million in combined production and marketing costs.
Shaw admitted even he thought Supergirl would have done better: “I just figured, clearly incorrectly, that the floor on a superhero movie was still like 250, 300. This movie is not going to sniff two.”
He added that he liked Milly Alcock and “thought the movie could potentially be decent,” which tracks with the blame landing on leadership, not the star.
Belloni, who attended CinemaCon, also reminded Shaw the writing was on the wall in Vegas: “You weren’t at CinemaCon. It was kind of a disaster.”
Via WB
The David Ellison Question Hanging Over DC Studios
Here’s the part that matters going forward, and it’s the same thread we’ve been pulling for months: what happens to Gunn and Safran once David Ellison’s Paramount closes on Warner Bros. Discovery.
From the episode: “It doesn’t mean that they’re going to necessarily abort the strategy. But if you’re David Ellison and you get your deal done, how much faith are you putting in these guys to know what they’re doing if they can’t make Supergirl work?”
That’s the whole ballgame.
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The DC reset was sold as the adults finally taking over: “the rebooted DC under these two guys who knew what they were doing,” as the episode put it.
Two movies in, the second one is the bomb of the year, and the incoming owner hasn’t even taken the keys yet.
Elsewhere in the episode, Belloni said he’s skeptical WBD even gets to its planned split, and noted Netflix walked away from the bidding war with $2.8 billion after running up Ellison’s price, meaning the man who overpaid for this studio is going to want answers.
Peter Safran’s Statement: ‘Please Do Not Fire Us’
The hosts also went in on Safran’s rare statement to The New York Times the Sunday after opening weekend, the one where he conceded Supergirl “did not meet our box office expectations” while insisting it’s “just one component of a broader long-term strategy.”
The translation offered on the podcast: “i.e., David Ellison, we’ve got a long-term strategy. Please do not fire us. We have a vision. We know what we’re doing.”
Even Superman Gets Called Out
The episode also took a shot at the foundation the whole “DCU is working” narrative rests on: “They took a big victory lap after Superman, which was a hit, but not the massive hit that they made it out to be, especially given the cost. And then huge flame out on the second movie.”
That’s a point we made when the Superman numbers came in, that the victory lap always outran the actual margins. Now the trades are saying it out loud.
Worst Possible Timing
The episode called this “the worst possible timing for them to have the bomb of the summer,” with the Ellison deal pending, and it’s about to get worse.
San Diego Comic-Con is two weeks out, where DC Studios will have to sell a slate and a strategy while wearing the bomb of the year, and while the blame-game reporting (THR’s creative-squabbles exclusive among them) keeps landing.
None of this should surprise CBN readers. This is the worst-case scenario we laid out back in May when the tracking first cratered, and the bomb math has only gotten uglier since. The box office is the arbiter, and now the most plugged-in reporters in town have rendered the same verdict: biggest losers in Hollywood, 2026.
Will Harrigan writes about comics, movies, and pop culture for Cosmic Book News. He is a comic book and film enthusiast, with a particular interest in cosmic comics.