When Warner Bros. announced that James Gunn and Peter Safran would be running the new DC Studios and starting from close to scratch with their own cinematic universe, I was over the moon. After all, Gunn is responsible for some of my favorite movies in the MCU and the DCEU, including Guardians of the Galaxy and The Suicide Squad. However, the latest announcement from DC Studios has kicked my interest into overdrive.
This week, Gunn announced that DC Studios and Warner Bros. Pictures Animation greenlit a new theatrical release titled Dynamic Duo. The movie will follow the early days of Dick Grayson and Jason Todd, two characters that have been Batman’s sidekick Robin in the comics. Notably, Gunn also says the movie from Swaybox Studios will feature “a mix of animation, puppetry, and CGI,” which is not a combination of words I expected to read.
If you’re having trouble imagining what this might look like, take a look at this behind-the-scenes clip from a Super Bowl commercial Swaybox worked on in 2022:
Animated features have continued to one-up each other in recent years, from the Spider-Verse movies to Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, The Mitchells vs. the Machines, and The Wild Robot, which just hit theaters. The animation style from Swaybox looks far more unusual and distinctive than any of those movies, which makes it all the more exciting.
Whether or not this movie hits the mark, it’s thrilling that DC and WB are willing to take a risk on something that could genuinely surprise moviegoers. That got me thinking about the aversion to risk-taking on the other side of the aisle.
Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy was a true risk for Marvel Studios. No one outside of the comic book readership had ever heard of these characters prior to the movie, and yet Marvel put them center stage in the MCU just six years after Iron Man hit theaters. That risk paid off handsomely and resulted in one of Marvel’s best trilogies to date.
That sense of surprise has been absent from the MCU lately. That isn’t to say that there haven’t been exceptions to the rule — I was blown away by Werewolf by Night, and Ms. Marvel brought a completely different energy to the MCU — but the guard rails around the storytelling are more apparent than ever. Even if a show or movie doesn’t move the overarching plot forward — like Agatha All Along — it’s still clearly embedded in the MCU stylistically and creatively.
In other words, there isn’t a place for a Dynamic Duo in the MCU right now. Meanwhile, Gunn’s new studio is greenlighting this wacky, innovative project before it even puts its first DCU movie out in theaters (which is Superman, slated to debut on July 11, 2025).
It’s worth noting that there’s no indication this movie will have any direct connection to the larger DCU. Deadline reports that it is not part of Matt Reeves’ The Batman and The Penguin universe either, through Reeves’ 6th & Idaho is producing the movie.
Here’s hoping the animators and puppeteers at Swaybox Studios can prove with Dynamic Duo that not every comic book movie has to fit in the same box.
