Netflix Has a Huge Opportunity With the DC Studios Superheroes

In a corner bungalow on the Warner Bros. lot in Los Angeles, a towering Superman statue casts a shadow across the desk of Peter Safran, co-head of DC Studios. The surface of the workspace is buried under Batman and Wonder Woman comic books, merchandise and annotated scripts.

Safran and director James Gunn, his counterpart, have been plotting the future of some of the world’s best-known superheroes. Their plan kicked off in July with Superman, but there’s a lot more in the works: Supergirl and Clayface movies next year, sequels to Superman and The Batman in 2027, a second season of The Penguin and a true-crime series based on superintelligent villain Gorilla Grodd. (Gunn starts shooting the new Superman in April; director Matt Reeves starts filming the new Batman movie in May.) “When we took the job, obviously the goal was to turn DC into the crown jewel that we knew it deserved to be,” Safran told Bloomberg Businessweek in mid-November. “We’ve only literally started scratching the surface.”