Update 7/8: That didn’t take long. One day after this story published, Deadline reported American Vandal star Jimmy Tatro is in talks to play Gorilla Grodd in the series — the creators casting their own mockumentary lead as the Season 1 villain, which tells you everything about the tone our insiders described below. Full details on the Tatro news here.
Update 7/15: Tatro’s deal is closed. He is officially DC’s Gorilla Grodd, meaning the American Vandal creators cast their own mockumentary star as the Season 1 villain. The tone our insiders described below is now on the call sheet, and the series still has no greenlight.
While DC Studios co-CEO Peter Safran makes the rounds talking up a Gorilla Grodd HBO series, our insiders have filled us in on the Jimmy Olsen series in development at DC Studios, and it sounds really “weird.”
Per our insiders, they hear the show is being developed as a mockumentary-style investigative crime series, with James Gunn going back to his indie roots and conceiving the approach alongside the showrunners.
One insider went so far as to describe the project to us as a “superhero Spinal Tap.”
Jimmy Olsen Series A Mockumentary Investigative Crime Show
Jimmy Olsen, played by Skyler Gisondo in Superman, is a Daily Planet photographer, so you can see where this is going: fake-documentary cameras following Superman’s pal around Metropolis as he digs into some case.
Think This Is Spinal Tap by way of true-crime parody — American Vandal with a cape somewhere in the background.
For those who don’t get the references: This Is Spinal Tap is the 1984 Rob Reiner comedy that invented the modern mockumentary — a fake documentary played completely straight — while Netflix’s American Vandal used that same deadpan format to spoof true-crime docs by treating a dumb high school prank like a murder investigation.
To be clear, what we’re told concerns the format and creative approach; plot and casting details weren’t part of the intel.
But a mockumentary is quite the choice for a cinematic universe that’s supposed to be building toward gods and monsters.
Insiders: The Jimmy Olsen Show Is A Facade For Gunn
Here’s the kicker: we’re told the series was conceived as a facade, a way for Gunn to show he’s doing work developing the universe.
The project is described to us as “lazy,” a product of Gunn being unable to do anything epic, so instead, he retreats to the indie-comedy comfort zone where he started.
So while The Brave and the Bold still has no release date and the DCU’s biggest guns sit in development limbo, the actual creative energy at DC Studios is going toward a talking gorilla and a fake documentary about Jimmy Olsen. Got it.
Follows Concerns Gunn Keeps Making The Same Thing
None of this happens in a vacuum.
As we recently covered, Hollywood already thinks the bill has come due for the Guardians of the Galaxy formula at the box office.
Superman leaned hard into comedy. Peacemaker is a raunch-com. Supergirl was sold as the punk-rock quipfest. Now the next TV swing is literally a comedy format.
The universe only moves in one direction: smaller and jokier.
DC Studios In Crisis After Supergirl’s Collapse
The timing here says everything.
This intel arrives on the heels of Supergirl‘s 80% second-weekend collapse following its $37 million opening, the leak that Warners wants Gunn out, with word that filmmakers don’t want to work with DC, and why there’s still no DCU Batman movie, with Matt Reeves pushing back.
With the Paramount–Warner Bros. Discovery merger barreling toward the finish line and Gunn’s future an open question, a Jimmy Olsen mockumentary isn’t going to save the slate.
Maybe “superhero Spinal Tap” fits the whole DCU better than intended: the audience isn’t shrinking, it’s just becoming “more selective.”
