James Gunn in talks with Injustice and Batman devs – what does this mean for DC games?
During a press event to discuss upcoming DC movies and TV shows, James Gunn touched upon video games, which may provide a hint on what to expect from Injustice 3 and Rocksteady’s next project.
During a press event to discuss upcoming DC movies and TV shows, James Gunn touched upon video games, which may provide a hint on what to expect from Injustice 3 and Rocksteady’s next project.
Although the new DC Comics cinematic universe (or DCU as it’s called) technically began with the Creature Commandos show, what will really set the bar is James Gunn’s long awaited Superman movie when it releases in July.
With the DCU starting to take shape, we’re most curious to see how the gaming side of things will be handled. Gunn has previously expressed a desire to have DC games be as much a part of the DCU as the movies and TV shows, even to the point where they’ll all share the same actors.
It’s never been clear how involved Gunn will be or what his exact plans for DC video games are, but he and fellow DC Studios CEO Peter Safran have already begun talking with Warner Bros. studios NetherRealm and Rocksteady about their upcoming work.
Speaking during a recent press event, Gunn and Safran outlined a number of new and already announced DC projects, which now includes a Green Lantern cartoon and a Starfire origin movie.
While they had nothing explicit to share regarding new video games, the pair did reveal they’ve begun speaking with Warner Bros. developers NetherRealm Studios and Rocksteady.
‘We see designs for the projects in their very earliest stages,’ said Gunn (via Comicbook). ‘We talk about those, we talk about what the story might be and we’ll say ‘Well, you maybe you want to go this way because we’re planning on maybe doing something with this character.’’
At the moment, NetherRealm and Rocksteady’s next DC projects haven’t been officially announced, but the former is expected to be working on a third entry in its Injustice series of fighting games while the latter is reportedly returning to the Batman well (with it rumoured to be a Batman Beyond game) after the dismal failure of its Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League.
The Injustice series deals with a renegade Superman who took over the world, sparking a war among superheroes, which is completely antithetical to the traditional and hopeful vibes Gunn’s own Superman movie is promising.
If Gunn is getting more actively involved with these projects and potentially pushing for certain characters, should we expect an Injustice 3 to look drastically different to what came before or even be rebooted? Will any hypothetical Batman Beyond game be advertised as canon to the movies?
Possibly not since despite Gunn’s previous comments about ensuring consistency across the DCU, he’s clearly not opposed to projects that exist outside the main continuity.
For example, the second Robert Pattinson Batman movie is labelled as an Elseworlds story set in its own continuity and one of the newly announced TV shows, DC Super Powers, will depict characters like Flash and Green Lantern as high school students under the tutelage of their principal Martian Manhunter (per Variety).
Gunn also doesn’t appear to have a problem with darker stories since he’s hoping the origin movie for Batman villain Clayface will work as ‘a pure horror movie for somebody who doesn’t care at all about DC.’
Additional comments by Safran suggest that the pair are equally as curious to hear what the studios themselves would like to work with: ‘James and I sit with the guys that run the studios under [CEO and President of Global Streaming and Games JB Perette] whether it’s NetherRealm or Rocksteady. We sit with them and we talk about characters and stories that we’re interested in and that they’re interested in,’ said Safran.
Pitches for games starring the Flash and John Constantine by Warner Bros. Montréal (which is also working on its own DC project) had apparently been rejected in the past, so maybe Gunn and Safran will be more open to such ideas going forward.
We ultimately won’t know what the future of DC games will look like until we see some results, with Gunn and Safran saying that won’t happen for another couple of years.
It’s also not clear if they’re referring to a full-fledged game or promotional crossover content, like something involving Fortnite, which is rumoured to be getting a new Superman skin this year to coincide with the movie.
Superman can already do TikTok dances and shoot guns at people in Fortnite so Warner Bros. can’t be that concerned with consistency (Epic Games)Email [email protected], leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter, and sign-up to our newsletter.
To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here.
For more stories like this, check our Gaming page.
ArrowMORE: MultiVersus being shut down in May as it flops for a second time
ArrowMORE: The world needs a good Superman video game – Reader’s Feature
ArrowMORE: Mortal Kombat 1 flop leads to cancelled expansion & DLC claim rumours
