DC Studios co-CEO Peter Safran has said the Gorilla Grodd / Jimmy Olsen HBO show starts shooting later this year.
Speaking to Brazilian content creator Good Nerd while promoting the upcoming Supergirl movie, Safran teased the future for the DCU, mentioning plans to introduce Batman into the rebooted universe with The Brave and the Bold, and a Justice League movie to tie everything together.
“We know eventually, you head in that direction,” Safran said of Justice League. “But we really are just talking about those movies that we’ve announced and those projects we’ve announced. Supergirl, Lanterns for HBO, Clayface this fall, Man of Tomorrow, Batman Part 2. You know we’re going to do Brave and the Bold, which brings Batman into the DCU.
“We’ve talked about the Gorilla Grodd show for HBO that we’ll start shooting this year. That’s big news, by the way. I probably shouldn’t have said that!”
Late last year, it was reported that DC Studios and HBO Max were developing a fictional true crime series set in the DCU called DC Crime. According to Variety, it would look and feel like a true crime docuseries presented by Jimmy Olsen, and the first season would focus on Gorilla Grodd.
Jimmy Olsen, played by Skyler Gisondo, was one of the breakout characters in last year’s Superman. Created by writer John Broome and artist Carmine Infantino, Gorilla Grodd debuted in The Flash #106 back in May 1959. He is a super-intelligent ape who possesses super strength and speed as well as the powers of telepathy and telekinesis (Gorilla Grodd ranked 35th on IGN’s Top 100 Comic Book Villains of all time). Will DC Crime show us a fully CG Gorilla Grodd running around Metropolis?
Grodd has been adapted from the comics before. He was in the animated movie Batman Ninja and was a villain in NetherRealm’s Injustice 2 fighting game. Grodd made his live-action debut in the Arrowverse’s The Flash as a major antagonist, then was a supporting antagonist in Season 3 of its 2016 spinoff, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow.
There is a degree of uncertainty about the DCU beyond next year’s Man of Tomorrow, which is currently filming for a summer 2027 release. Co-CEO James Gunn recently confirmed the Booster Gold and Paradise Lost TV shows are still alive, but The Authority movie has fallen by the wayside.
The Authority was one of the surprise projects announced as part of Gunn and Safran’s overarching Chapter 1: Gods and Monsters DC Universe reboot three years ago. At the time, Gunn described The Authority, which revolves around the infamously brutal superhero team of the same name from the WildStorm Universe, as a “big movie,” but it ran into significant issues.
The question is, when will Booster Gold and Paradise Lost — and now Gorilla Grodd / Jimmy Olsen — come out? Given Safran mentioned Gorilla Grodd actually filming this year, it seems closest to release. Right now, we have confirmed release dates for HBO show Lanterns, movies Supergirl and Clayface, and the aforementioned Man of Tomorrow.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
