DC Studios co-CEO James Gunn recently announced the upcoming slate of fresh DC TV shows and films, which mark the ‘first chapter’ of the modern DC Universe, titled ‘Gods and Monsters’. In his presentation, Gunn spoke of a 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 video games are part of Marvel’s current plans, they are disconnected from their movie counterparts.
This is likely due to a number of reasons – the complications of maintain ‘canon’ across multiple different teams, the difficulty of creating video games, and the desire for new creative stories and voices – but whatever the case, Marvel has typically avoided modern tie-in games.
Read: Everything we know about Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League
DC appears to be going for a different approach.
‘Gaming is a big 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 just part of it, but it’s an area that we love, and we think could be really expanded upon.’
So far, plans for these tie-in video games have not been made clear – nor has the impact of this 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’ for these projects by establishing that there will 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 video games.
Whatever the case, it appears the new declaration from DC Studios will create a spot of complication for studios currently working on DC video games, as the new ruling effectively renders all stories non-canon to the ‘main’ events of the DCU. We’ll find out more about how these changes will be implemented as the first chapter of DC Studios kicks off, beginning 2025.
The next major DC video game to release, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, will not be part of the modern DCU.
