UPDATE: The Wrap claims that the Booster Gold series isn’t dead and will be moving forward with a new writer.
Booster Gold is dead at James Gunn’s DC Studios.
David Jenkins confirmed Friday that his HBO Max series is over, and it comes after he revealed he had turned in a finished pilot script he loved.
“My Booster Gold won’t be moving forward,” Jenkins posted on Threads.
Jenkins added that he could not improve on Mahershala Ali’s recent statement about Marvel’s Blade, so he was applying it to his own show.
The Mahershala Ali Parallel Says Everything
The statement Jenkins borrowed comes from Ali’s new GQ profile, where the actor finally closed the book on Blade. A
li’s point was blunt: Marvel had him under contract, Marvel has billions of dollars, and if the studio wanted to make the movie, the movie would have been made. He has moved on. “They didn’t want to do it, so they should answer that question,” Ali said.
That is the statement Jenkins chose to speak for him.
Read it back with Booster Gold swapped in and the message is unmistakable. This is not a writer walking away from a project. This is a writer saying the studio declined to make it, and that the questions about why now belong to DC and HBO.
DC Studios did not respond to Variety’s request for comment.
Days After The Script Went In
The timing is what makes this one sting. Jenkins was hired in July 2025 to write the pilot and run the show if it went to series. Just recently, he announced he had handed in the finished script, calling it “one of my favorite pilot scripts.”
That mattered because of who reads it. HBO Max boss Casey Bloys has been clear he greenlights DC shows script by script, on the quality of the page rather than any Gunn master plan.
Jenkins delivered the page and said it was some of his best work. The answer still came back no.
Maybe Bloys passed on the read. But the Ali statement Jenkins chose points somewhere else: at a decision made above the script, long before it landed.
Canceled After All
This is also the ending CBN readers saw coming.
Back in March, Jenkins deleted his posts about the show, which raised exactly this question. James Gunn pushed back in April, insisting Booster Gold remained in development even as he confirmed The Authority was dead. Three months later, the writer himself says the series is done.
Note the wording, too. Jenkins said “my” Booster Gold will not move forward. That leaves DC room to take another run at the character someday. But this show, the one announced to the world with this creator, is over.
The Nanjiani Rumor Dies With It
The cancellation also closes the book on the casting rumor that would not die.
For more than two years, Kumail Nanjiani was rumored to be the frontrunner, or even a lock, to play Michael Jon Carter. DC never confirmed it, Gunn dodged it as recently as December, and now there is no role left to confirm.
The Gods And Monsters Slate Keeps Shrinking
Booster Gold was announced in January 2023 as part of the first Gods and Monsters wave.
Look at where that TV slate stands now. Creature Commandos made it out. Lanterns finally arrives in August after delays. Waller is stalled, with Bloys saying it is not on the runway.
Paradise Lost has been sitting in “extreme development” since April with nothing to show since. And Booster Gold is now officially dead.
Meanwhile, the recent DC updates from Peter Safran have all been about television: the Gorilla Grodd series that Gunn confirmed is the Jimmy Olsen show, Justice League, and Batman and The Brave and the Bold.
Gunn and Safran still have not announced a single feature film to follow Man of Tomorrow, which lines up with Paramount buying WBD and DC leadership’s contracts expiring in 2027.
So the film slate sits frozen against the 2027 wall, and now the TV pipeline is shedding shows instead of adding them.
Jenkins, for his part, has moved on. As the statement he borrowed puts it, the remaining questions belong to the studio.
