Everyone Needs To Calm Down About James Gunn's Replacement

As more details emerge about James Gunn's exit from DC Studios, we now know that he was fired for reasons that, frankly, make a lot of sense. He was in over his head and the proof was in a DCU that started out strong then lost all momentum almost immediately. Fans wanted to know where this was all going, and Gunn got very sweaty in recent weeks trying to smooth things over.

But I'm not here to get into all that. I'm here to talk about Jeremy Latcham and the social media freakout over his hiring as Gunn's replacement. Unfortunately, this is going to put me in the unenviable position of defending Skydance, but if there's one thing I can't stand, it's when our side of the aisle latches onto reductive social media narratives and reacts viciously to any information that counters it. Thinking critically is not allowed, only vibes.

Immediately on the heels of Gunn's ouster, this Threads post start flying around, and it executed a surefire method of peak social media engagement: Confirm people priors. Forget nuance. Just squash everything down to a black and white frame then ladle it into waiting mouths, who will readily spread it to others.

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Let's be very clear why Jeremy Latcham was brought in: Gunn's DCU was flailing, and he was already refusing to play ball with Skydance after having full creative freedom under David Zaslav. DC Studios is an IP goldmine that's stalling out, so Josh Greenstein, the head of Skydance Motion Picture Group, reached out to a guy who knows something about this arena.

Via THR:

The two first worked together nearly 20 years ago when Latcham was a rising Marvel exec and Greenstein was in the marketing department at Paramount, the studio that released Iron Man and Iron Man 2. They teamed again when Greenstein was at Sony and made Spider-Man: Homecoming with Marvel.

Latcham isn't just an experienced Marvel veteran who started on the ground floor, he was Kevin Feige's #2 and instrumental in getting one very particular franchise off the ground: Guardians of the Galaxy. Gee, whatever became of the director of that movie?

As for Latcham's faith, the internet is latching onto an interview he gave to Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) to promote The Breadwinner, which he produced. A smoking gun, this thing is not. It's extremely anodyne and mostly centers on Latcham being self-deprecating about being the guy at Marvel who wanted to make sure the movies were reaching as broad an audience as possible, including his grandma. He'd expand on this theme again.

Via Variety:

"In the old Marvel days, there's this great story about my Meemaw and Peepaw because they became, like, a joke in the editing room - that we were making the movie for my grandparents in Oklahoma," Latcham previously said in a separate interview with GamesRadar+. "If they weren't gonna understand it, [it was] never going to work for anybody... I think that's kind of the fun of these movies, of adapting material - finding a way to make it for everybody. You have to be true to the fans, but you have to make it ultimately for everybody."

To Latcham's credit, the proof is in the pudding. He was at Marvel during the salad days of The Infinity Saga, and one thing I'll never forget about my screening of Avengers: Endgame is how many elderly people were in the audience. Grandmas love Murder Grimace, I guess.

As for Latcham making faith-based films, he was working with Wonder Project, which made The Breadwinner. As Pajiba's resident atheist crank, I'm here to tell you there wasn't a shred of Christianity in that film outside of Nate Bargatze's presence. In fact, spoiler alert, the movie ends with his wife becoming the titular breadwinner and Bargatze's character working for her. I'm amazed that thing didn't get ripped apart on X, The Tradwife App, but that would require people actually watching The Breadwinner, which did not happen except for me and Dustin. OK, that's not entirely true. My super MAGA parents saw it, and they were not impressed. Their brief Nate Bargatze fandom ended right then and there.

Do I love that studios like Wonder Project exist? Sure don't, but I do love the First Amendment. If Jeremy Latcham wants to spend his time and other people's money making projects that are important to his faith and specifically for a faith-based audience, awesome. Go nuts. Every religion in America should have that freedom, not just Christianity, so knock yourselves out.

As for the growing talking point that Latcham is replacing Gunn because David Ellison doesn't like Gunn's "anti-genocide agenda," holy crap, stop it. Hawkgirl did not drop a Netanyahu proxy out of the sky because Superman was not about a certain Middle Eastern conflict. How do I know? Because James Gunn went on the record saying Superman was written before that situation exploded in 2023 and has nothing to do with that conflict. Even James Gunn is running from James Gunn's supposed stance on that one.

So, why was Jeremy Latcham brought in? For the simplest of all reasons: cash money. He's a guy with strong experience at Marvel, and Skydance needs to start raking in box office as quickly as possible now that it's strapped to massive debt from the Warner Bros. merger. Turning DC Studios into Angel Studios won't solve that problem, and you know who knows that better than anyone: Jeremy Latcham. His guiding light at Marvel was mass appeal, not ideology, and it worked. More specifically, he knows faith-based films have a limited audience, and he watched in real-time as The Breadwinner whimpered on the runway without getting a foot off the ground. Do you honestly think Latcham was hired because of a failed Nate Bargatze movie instead of being Kevin Feige's right-hand man? Be serious.

There's only one God that's going to be served with this endeavor: The almighty dollar.