Update 8/4: The casting keeps rolling on the ungreenlit show. Deadline reports Mary Holland (Ghosts) has closed her deal as the series’ female lead, playing a character named Sandra â and there’s still no greenlight. Full details on the Holland casting here.
Jimmy Tatro’s deal is done.
One week after entering talks, Deadline reports the American Vandal star will officially play Gorilla Grodd in DC Studios’ Jimmy Olsen series for HBO Max, with the trade noting in the same breath that “HBO has yet to officially greenlight the series.”
As we covered last week, Tatro entered negotiations for the role on July 8. Per Deadline’s sources, the casting is now official. HBO Max declined to comment.
The series is billed as a true-crime docuseries hosted by Jimmy Olsen, played by Skyler Gisondo in Superman and expected to reprise the role, with Season 1 centered on Grodd.
American Vandal creators Tony Yacenda and Dan Perrault write, executive produce, and showrun, with James Gunn and Peter Safran EPing, Galen Vaisman overseeing for DC Studios, and Warner Bros. Television producing.
Grodd was created in 1959 by John Broome and Carmine Infantino, the hyper-intelligent telepathic ape who wants to rule both the simian and human worlds and keeps getting stopped by The Flash.
He’s a veteran of the Arrowverse and already established in DCU continuity via Creature Commandos.
The Tone Question Is Settled
Follow the chain.
The rumor we covered said casting was zeroing in on comedic actors to voice Grodd. Then Tatro, the star of what Deadline itself describes as Netflix’s “mockumentary series” American Vandal, entered talks. Now he’s officially the gorilla.
That’s the “superhero Spinal Tap“ treatment our insiders described, locked in on the call sheet.
And DC didn’t just hire a comedy actor. It hired one whose stock is spiking.
Tatro is currently promoting The Hawk, the Will Ferrell Netflix golf comedy in which he plays Lance, son of Ferrell’s title character. Up next, he stars opposite Ferrell again in the Nicholas Stoller-directed Judgment Day, following Scream 7, You’re Cordially Invited, and 22 Jump Street.
One of the hottest comedy actors going is now the Season 1 villain of a DC series. The tone question is settled.
Officially Cast, Still No Greenlight
Here’s the part nobody else will lead with: the show this is all attached to still doesn’t officially exist.
Safran already let slip it shoots this year, catching himself with “I probably shouldn’t have said that.” The same report on the comedy casting put cameras in Atlanta from late August through October, and now the lead villain has a closed deal.
Everything about this show is moving except the greenlight.
And the timing makes it louder. The Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery merger that decides who actually owns this studio is now tied up in a lawsuit from a dozen state attorneys general.
So DC Studios is officially attaching actors to an ungreenlit gorilla mockumentary while the $110 billion deal above its head sits in court.
That reads exactly like what our insiders said this show was from the start: a facade, proof of development while the DCU’s big guns idle.
Officially casting the gorilla before anyone signs off on the show is that strategy on fast-forward. Make it real enough, fast enough, that whoever ends up in charge finds it easier to keep than to kill.
The gorilla is now official. The show still isn’t.
