UPDATE 8/26: TheWrap says Paramount plans to keep Gunn and Safran at DC. Per our insiders, only until their contracts run out, and the long-term DC deals still aren’t moving.
UPDATE: Two states just told the Supreme Court the opposite, and both things are true. Iowa and Montana’s filing says Warner Bros. is “frozen” and needs Paramount’s approval for certain decisions — nothing is on hold because nothing big is being decided.
James Gunn says the DCU’s Batman movie, The Brave and the Bold, is not on hold. Nothing at DC Studios is, he says.
And the man who recently made the claim now walks it all back and says Andy Muschietti was “out of the loop” and only “insinuated” it, in Spanish, weeks ago, outside a movie theater.
None of it puts a DCU Batman in the suit.
On Sunday, we reported that filmmaker and commentator Dan Marcus posted that Muschietti told him “all work on The Brave and the Bold is on hold until after the merger is settled.”
On Monday, a fan on Threads showed Gunn the screenshot and asked, “Care to debunk this?”
Gunn did: “It doesn’t sound like something Andy would have said but the project is in no way on hold.”
In the same thread, another fan asked whether the DCU projects in development are on hold because of the merger.
Gunn: “No. Nothing is on hold.”
The Source Walks It Back
Around the same time Monday, Dan Marcus posted a clarification on X: “My suspicion is that Andy Muschietti is unaware of the current status for THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD. He spoke with my friend and me about this a few weeks ago, so either he is out of the loop or there have since been updates. I asked my friend to clarify because they spoke Spanish and my friend translated.”
He attached the friend’s answer: “Well he made it very clear that he WAS out of the loop and that he only suspected that nothing’s going to happen until the merger is settled. But all of that was only insinuated, which now makes more sense for plausible deniability.”
Then an apology: “I apologize for any confusion my previous post may have caused. For the record, I don’t see myself as a ‘scooper’. One evening, my friend and I literally just ran into Muschietti outside a movie theater and inquired about the status of THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD. That’s it.”
So the chain of custody is a chance encounter outside a theater a few weeks ago, a conversation in Spanish, a friend translating, and a director who “only suspected” and “insinuated” rather than said.
Sunday’s post said “I did hear from Muschietti.”
Monday’s says nothing was actually stated.
What Survives
Read the walkback again, because two things in it are not retracted.
First: Muschietti “made it very clear that he WAS out of the loop.”
That is the man announced in June 2023 as the director of the DCU’s Batman movie, three years later, telling two strangers outside a theater that he does not know what is happening on it.
Second: what Muschietti “suspected” is that “nothing’s going to happen until the merger is settled.”
Marcus retracted the certainty, not the expectation. The announced director’s own read on the movie is that it waits on Paramount.
Gunn’s reply has the same shape. “It doesn’t sound like something Andy would have said” is a guess about Muschietti, not an account of a conversation with him, as Gunn didn’t speak with him.
And “in no way on hold” describes a project Gunn himself keeps describing as an unfinished script with no Batman cast, while the director is back on It: Welcome to Derry Season 2 and Gunn says he won’t “cloud the Batsphere” while Matt Reeves’ The Batman Part II is in production, a movie now dated February 2028.
That is what “not on hold” looks like at DC Studios in August 2026.
The Contract Didn’t Move Either
Nothing Gunn or Marcus said touches the reason we ran the story.
Per The Hollywood Reporter, the merger agreement restricts new deals involving “key property” IP.
Warner Bros. can sign them, but they can only run for two years past a closing date that does not exist yet, and anything longer or bigger gives Paramount the first crack.
Ellison already holds veto power over DC’s long-term future.
Which makes Gunn’s second answer the more revealing one, because he is right about it. Nothing is on hold, and Paramount has not denied a single DC project. Under the agreement THR laid out, it has not had to.
Look at what DC Studios is actually making: a Man of Tomorrow filling up with single-appearance cameo contracts, single-season orders at HBO Max, deals that fit inside two years and stay under the $30 million approval threshold. Short paper. All of it fits inside the window the current agreement lets Warner Bros. sign on its own.
So Paramount doesn’t have to approve or deny anything. The slate has been shaped so it never reaches Ellison’s desk.
A Batman movie is a director deal, a multi-picture star contract, sequel options, and a Justice League down the line. It is nothing but long paper and expensive.
The projects that fit the contract move. The one that doesn’t sits. “Nothing is on hold” and “no Batman cast” are the same sentence.
That is not a rumor from outside a theater. It is the deal terms, per THR.
Same Insiders
Gunn’s and Peter Safran’s DC Studios deals reportedly run only into spring 2027, per Bloomberg. The trial starts March 2.
Per our insiders, Gunn’s DC farewell is already written, with Ellison’s side wanting both him and Safran out. Those same sources have said the DCU’s Batman is not Gunn’s call to make, and that when the call comes, it goes to Matt Reeves and Zack Snyder.
Same insiders, same track record. And they’re the same insiders that HBO indirectly confirmed when they flagged our Lanterns info.
Gunn says the project is in no way on hold. Per the contract and per our sources, whether it stays that way is up to David Ellison.
