The future of the DCU has officially taken shape after James Gunn and Peter Safran rolled out the project that will comprise Chapter 1 – Gods & Monsters, while Dwayne Johnson kept himself busy riding around in a golf cart shilling energy drinks.
Things could have been so different had Black Adam performed well enough to ensure Warner Bros. had no choice but to give the okay to a sequel, but The Rock’s plans to change the hierarchy of power couldn’t have gone much worse. Sure, he tried to rewrite the history books and claim he wasn’t planning to carve out his own corner of the franchise, but nobody was buying it.
Not that he’s let it slow him down in any way, shape, or form, though, even if he’s got to be seething over how his brief tenure as a resident of the DCU ended. Johnson has been hard at work shooting Prime Video’s blockbuster action comedy Red One in the meantime, and he’s posted a tribute video to the crew after officially calling it a wrap.
Unlike Black Adam, Red One is guaranteed success, seeing as it won’t even see the inside of a theater. Without those pesky box office returns to worry about, the festive spectacular is obligated to draw in monster-sized viewing figures, especially when Johnson also headlined Red Notice on-demand, which ended up becoming Netflix’s most-watched original movie ever.
There are already plans for an entire shared universe afoot with Seven Bucks at the helm, and you can bet that Amazon will be pulling out all the stops to make it happen, while Johnson should theoretically get the opportunity to luxuriate in a world-building big budget opening chapter that actually manages to last longer than one feature this time.