Between its reanimated corpses and humanoid animals, HBO’s new Creature Commandos series doesn’t really look or sound anything like Warner Bros.’ other upcoming projects featuring characters from DC’s comics. But DC Studios co-head James Gunn says that’s by design and part of his plan to make the studio a place where any kind of story can be greenlit if it’s got the right script.
While DC Studios has plans for fresh, live-action takes on Batman, Superman, the Green Lanterns, it’s kicking off its latest cinematic universe with Creature Commandos, an animated series about Amanda Waller’s (Viola Davis) secret squad of monster mercenaries. The show will feature a couple of nifty connections to previous DC shows like Peacemaker and films like The Suicide Squad, but its offbeat characters and TV-MA rating are part of why Gunn (DC Studios’ co-hed alongside Peter Safran) sees it as the start of something new.
In a recent interview with Variety, Gunn described Creature Commandos as a “soft intro” that will waste no time establishing how metahumans, monsters, and magic are all core parts of DC Studios’ interconnected world. It took the old DCEU a while and cost it quite a bit of money to introduce some of its more fantastical heroes and villains in ways that felt organic for the big screen. But Gunn noted that part of the reason he felt so bullish about greenlighting Creature Commandos (which he also wrote) boiled down to the simple fact that, in animation it basically “costs as much to create a battlefield as it does to create a kitchen.”
Gunn also explained that Creature Commandos felt like a good jumping off point because of its ability to convey to audiences that DC Studios isn’t limiting its output to family-friendly fare.
“We can make something that’s for general audiences, like Superman,” Gunn said. “We can make something that’s violent and sexual, like [Creature Commandos] — which I didn’t think was that violent and sexual; Peacemaker is both more violent and more sexual — but I want every project to have its own voice. It isn’t about creating a world in which everything is all sex and violence. It’s about creating a world in which we can tell the story about, you know, one type of character in different genres.”
DC Studios wouldn’t exactly be the first to test that idea out — Marvel’s been trying to pull it off for the past few years with mixed results — but it’s interesting to hear that Gunn intends for it to be central to the studio’s brand. And after Creature Commandos premieres tonight on Max, we’ll have a chance to see how the idea actually plays.