James Gunn Keeps His DC Job as Warner Bros.' Movie Chiefs Are Pushed Out

David Ellison asked Gunn and Peter Safran to stay, while Warner Bros.' Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy leave on Tuesday.

James Gunn and Peter Safran, the pair who run DC Studios, are keeping their jobs, at least for now, as David Ellison takes over Warner Bros. The executives who ran Warner Bros.' movie side, Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy, aren't.

The merged company got its name on Friday, Oct. 2, when Ellison brought back Skydance as the banner for Paramount and Warner Bros. combined. His launch reel cut together movies and shows from both studios to Hans Zimmer's music from Inception, then ended on eight brand logos ringed around the new name. Three sat on the top row, above Skydance itself: Paramount's mountain, the Warner Bros. shield and DC's round bullet.

The day before, Gunn and Safran sat down with Ellison in person, and the meeting went well, several people told The Hollywood Reporter. The two were asked to stay on, with one person telling THR the message amounted to "keep doing what you're doing."

Their Warner Bros. counterparts once got the same kind of reassurance. "They met with David months ago and felt secure. Clearly a lot has changed since then," a studio insider told THR, adding that De Luca and Abdy had been led to believe they'd still have jobs after the merger. Their last day is Tuesday, Oct. 6, Deadline reported.

The movies now run through Paramount's film heads, Josh Greenstein and Dana Goldberg, who are expected to oversee both studios. And the roster isn't settled: Richard Brener, the head of New Line, is poised to jump to the merged company, Deadline reported.

Where DC sits on that chart is still an open question. It's unclear whether Gunn and Safran will answer straight to Ellison or report up through Greenstein and Goldberg, THR reported. Under Warner Bros. Discovery, they reported directly to its CEO, David Zaslav.

Ellison's backing didn't start this week. Over the summer he visited the Atlanta set of Man of Tomorrow, the big-budget Superman sequel due in July 2027. The thinking around the company, according to THR, is that Gunn and Safran should at least stay long enough to release what's finished or in post-production: that film and Clayface, a horror thriller that opens Oct. 23.

Warner Bros. already knows how the other version goes. In 2023, The Flash and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom were made under one studio regime and put in theaters by the next, and both underperformed at the box office.

DC's publishing side is having its best run in decades. Over the past two years, DC Comics has outsold Marvel Comics and taken market share from it for the first time in decades, a turnaround THR credited to the Absolute Universe imprint and a push to repair ties with creators. Rumors that Warner Bros. Discovery wanted to sell the division surfaced now and then over the years, and Zaslav never did. "It's an IP generator," one person familiar with DC told THR.

The merger could even hand the publisher new material, THR reported, with DC potentially putting out comics built on Paramount properties like Star Trek and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Merging whole brands is a different matter. "I can see why Skydance would combine Nickelodeon with Cartoon Network," the same source told THR. "DC? They're not touching that."

Source: hollywoodreporter.com, retrieved October 3, 2026.