Upcoming DC movies and video games will be connected, confirms James Gunn
First off, this does not include the upcoming Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League game. The future games will be planned as a part of the overall story that DC will look to tell.
DC Studios co-head James Gunn has revealed that video games will indeed be a part of the connected cinematic universe being planned at the heart of DC. James Gunn and Peter Safran, the new heads of DC Studios, will be using video games to contribute towards the planned grand story for DC’s cinematic universe.
DC and its history with video games
First off, this does not include the upcoming Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League game. The future games will be planned as a part of the overall story that DC will look to tell.
It was reported earlier that the duo have a plan to tell a “great overarching story", similar to how the MCU did it. Kevin Feige’s MCU certainly has set a standard for how to portray superhero movies on the big screen that DC has struggled to compete with so far. Speaking of setting standards, DC has set standards when it comes to superhero games with the Batman Arkham series.
However, even the company has failed to live up to those as the recently released Gotham Knights game received mixed reviews from fans and critics. Games that even remotely have a relation to Batman or Gotham are bound to be compared to the iconic video game series.
DC movies will be connected to the upcoming video games
While we knew that video games would be introduced, we didn’t know if they would be directly connected to the DC cinematic universe or if they’d be inspired by those stories. James Gunn confirmed on Twitter that these video games will be directly contributing to the main story.
Yes.
— James Gunn (@JamesGunn) November 27, 2022
Gunn was asked if all upcoming DC video games will be linked to the new cinematic universe and Gunn confirmed that not all games will be connected to the main storyline. This will ensure there’s enough creative room and capacity to tell different stories. Like the fan in question mentioned, we wouldn’t have video games like the Arkham series or the Injustice series without that freedom to tell stories that are separated from the main storyline.
Not all.
— James Gunn (@JamesGunn) November 28, 2022
However, the bigger question in all of this is how DC’s James Gunn and Peter Safran will be using the transmedia approach. We’ve seen it do wonders for Cyberpunk 2077 with Cyberpunk Edgerunners but even that approach told different stories with different characters and no link or path to a central story.
Perhaps DC could use video games to tell prequels or follow-up stories for their major characters. For instance, there has not been a major Superman video game in 20 years. With Henry Cavill back as Superman, we might see a video game that helps bring him back to the fold or tell a part of his story that does not reach the cinema halls.
Upcoming Marvel games
On the other side, Marvel is currently building their own gaming universe with Insomniac’s Spider-Man, Miles Morales, and Wolverine, Amy Hennig’s Black Panther game, and EA’s Iron Man game. Once again, these games are separate from the stories that the studio is telling on the big screen.