The gorilla was official. The female lead was official. As of today, so is the show.
HBO Max has handed DC Studios an eight-episode, straight-to-series order for The People v. Gorilla Grodd, a half-hour comedy produced with Warner Bros. Television.
Skyler Gisondo’s Jimmy Olsen reopens the case of a superintelligent ape (Jimmy Tatro) convicted of murdering his father, the King of Gorilla City, in what HBO’s own release calls an eight-part “true” crime docuseries. Quotation marks theirs.
It’s the show we’ve been tracking since Peter Safran let slip it shoots this year: cast for two months without an order, villain locked July 15, female lead locked August 4, cameras reported for Atlanta from the end of August.
HBO signed the paperwork the week the shoot was due to start.
And it signed it one day after Warner Bros. Discovery put Lanterns‘ 9.3 million viewers on the board. James Gunn made the connection himself.
The Cast, The Creators, And The Case
The Superman Daily Planet transfers over wholesale: Beck Bennett as Steve Lombard, Mikaela Hoover as Cat Grant, and Wendell Pierce as Perry White join Gisondo’s Olsen. Tatro is Grodd. Mary Holland, Eduardo Franco, Arian Moayed, Dan Perrault, Andrew Leeds, and Tim Baltz round out the cast, with Leeds and Baltz as the new names.
American Vandal creators Tony Yacenda and Dan Perrault are showrunners, writers, and executive producers, with Yacenda directing all eight episodes. Gunn and Safran executive produce.
The in-universe version of the announcement is a Daily Planet press release, and it’s the whole format in miniature.
“Director: Jimmy Olsen.” Supervising producer: Perry White, managing editor. Producers: Lombard and Grant. Grodd, convicted in March 2021 of “the murder and brain consumption of his father, King Grodd,” has been sitting in Stryker’s Island Penitentiary ever since, and Olsen was granted “unprecedented exclusive access” to interview him for a film promising a “lesser-seen side” of the hyperintelligent ape.
His new counsel comes from the Metropolis Freedom Project, which is the Innocence Project with the serial numbers barely filed off. The letterhead puts the Planet at 42 Concord Street, Metropolis, DE 19840, so Metropolis is in Delaware, like the old DC atlas always said.
Yacenda and Perrault say the goal is a series “that feels less like an entry into the DCU and more like an artifact from it,” a Daily Planet documentary made for the people of Metropolis. “And while we can’t speak for audiences here yet, we already know it’s a huge hit in Metropolis.”
That also closes the title saga. It was never DC Crime, as Gunn insisted, and it isn’t American Villain either. It’s The People v. Gorilla Grodd, a straight riff on The People v. O.J. Simpson.
It’s A Comedy. HBO Said So.
Back on July 7, our insiders described this show as a mockumentary “superhero Spinal Tap“, American Vandal with a cape, a fake documentary played straight and conceived by Gunn alongside the showrunners.
HBO’s press release calls it a “half-hour comedy” in the first sentence.
Amy Gravitt, who runs comedy for HBO and HBO Max, says the network can’t wait for fans to experience Tatro’s “captivating and hilarious portrayal of Grodd.”
Gunn calls it DC Studios’ “first foray into the true crime genre,” and his joint statement with Safran promises “the darker and funnier streets and alleyways of the DCU.”
The June rumor said a lawyer role was being cast and Grodd could end up on trial. He’s already been tried. The show is the appeal.
So the tone question our insiders answered in July is now network-official.
The newest DC Studios series order is a half-hour comedy about a telepathic gorilla’s wrongful-conviction docuseries, arriving the same month Supergirl left theaters as the lowest-grossing DC movie ever. The universe still moves in one direction.
The Lanterns Timing Is No Coincidence
Sunday, Lanterns premiered. Thursday, WBD announces 9.3 million global viewers in three days, the biggest DC Studios series debut on HBO Max.
Friday, HBO Max greenlights the Jimmy Olsen show, and Gunn’s announcement post reaches for the hit in the same sentence: “Along with Lanterns, this was one of the shows Peter & I pitched to WBD before we came on board.”
That’s Gunn putting his name on Lanterns one day after showrunner Chris Mundy told The Hollywood Reporter that Gunn was “off doing Superman” during development and only came in for high-level notes, and a week after the grounded True Detective approach turned out to be an HBO note that predates Gunn’s regime entirely.
Now it’s a hit, and it’s a show he pitched.
A gorilla mockumentary that spent all summer casting without a greenlight needed a headline to ride in on, and DC’s biggest premiere number ever on the platform arrived right on schedule.
Head of HBO, Casey Bloys, greenlights DC shows script by script.
Nothing makes a script-by-script order easier to sign than a 9.3 million figure still warm from the press release.
The Show That Got Greenlit While Everything Else Died
Put it against the rest of the DC TV slate.
Waller is dead. Paradise Lost is dead, four months after Gunn said it was in “extreme development.” Booster Gold is back at square one, allegedly.
The Catwoman and Poison Ivy pitches were passed on. The Penguin Season 2 is in limbo.
And Lanterns itself, the hit everyone is celebrating, still has no Season 2 order, with Mundy breaking the season on spec.
The show that got the order is the half-hour gorilla comedy.
That is exactly what our insiders said this project was for: a facade, visible development activity while the DCU’s big guns sit idle, Gunn retreating to the indie-comedy lane where he started.
Three and a half years after Gods and Monsters, the Wonder Woman prequel never got out of development. The gorilla got eight episodes and a director for all of them.
What Ellison Has To Say About It
The last piece is the merger.
As we reported, the Paramount agreement already gives Ellison’s side a say over new DC television, but Warner Bros. can still make normal-course deals as long as they run no more than two years past the closing date.
An eight-episode, single-season order is exactly that kind of paper, the same short-term lane Man of Tomorrow‘s cameo deals live in.
A WBD source told THR that Paramount hasn’t withheld consent on anything submitted so far. Either way, this is a commitment the outgoing regime can make without asking Ellison for anything long-term.
And it’s the strategy we called in July, on fast-forward: make the show real enough, fast enough, that whoever ends up in charge finds it easier to keep than to kill. Eight scripts, a full Superman supporting cast, cameras in Atlanta, and now a signed order.
Per our insiders, Gunn and Safran’s contracts aren’t being renewed and the farewell letters are already written. Before they go, they’ve put one more Gunn-era show on the new owner’s desk.
Grodd’s case gets reopened in eight episodes. The one that decides who owns the studio is still set for March 2027.
(note: featured image is Gorilla Grodd from The Flash and Jimmy Tatro from American Vandal)
