Mark Delaney: There's a version of events where everything Gunn said in February 2026 was true, and then something changed. And there's another version where the denial was — not exactly a lie, but not the whole picture either.
Mark Delaney: I honestly don't know which one it is.
Mark Delaney: What I do know is that August 12, 2026, Lesley Goldberg at The Ankler publishes a report — both Waller and Paradise Lost are dead at DC Studios and HBO. That's the fact sitting on the table.
Mark Delaney: And six months before that, James Gunn goes on social media and says Paradise Lost was — his word, not mine — definitely not cancelled.
Mark Delaney: At the same time, John Rocha is reporting that writers had been told the show was no longer in active development. Sources talking to Rocha, Gunn pushing back publicly. That's a direct contradiction, like, in real time.
Mark Delaney: Here's the complication though, and it actually matters — neither Waller nor Paradise Lost was ever formally ordered to series. So technically? They weren't cancelled. Because you can't cancel what was never officially greenlit. Development limbo is a real thing. Not in active development is genuinely different from cancelled. That distinction holds.
Mark Delaney: But definitely not cancelled is also a pretty specific phrase to reach for.
Mark Delaney: And the WGA registry as of June 2026 still had Kira Snyder listed as attached to Paradise Lost — meaning some form of development was still technically on the books even after all of that. So maybe Gunn wasn't lying. Maybe it was genuinely alive on paper, just… barely.
Mark Delaney: That's honestly the most unsettling read to me — not that someone lied, but that the whole system was that murky.
Mark Delaney: Viola Davis was going to headline Waller. Amanda Waller — a rare Black-led DC property, a character Davis built across multiple films. Peter Safran acknowledged in February 2025 that the scripts weren't coming together. Casey Bloys at HBO said separately the show wasn't progressing. And the whole thing traces back to that January 2023 moment when Gunn and Safran unveiled Chapter One: Gods and Monsters and made Paradise Lost and Waller look like cornerstones.
Mark Delaney: And look — that's not even the full wreckage.
Mark Delaney: Because Waller and Paradise Lost going dark is one thing. But then David Jenkins confirms Booster Gold isn't moving forward either. That's a third project from the 2023 slate. The Authority — also scrapped. And then The Ankler report drops and it's not just the cancellations, it's that DC and HBO heard pitches for a Poison Ivy series and a Catwoman show… and passed on both.
Mark Delaney: Passed on them.
Mark Delaney: The easy read is — okay, DC is doing the big-three thing. Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman. Concentrate the resources, stop bleeding money on spinoffs. That's a coherent strategy, right? Pull toward the proven center.
Mark Delaney: Except — Lanterns.
Mark Delaney: Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre, HBO Green Lantern show, greenlit. That's the one clear TV win under Gunn and Safran. And Green Lantern is not Batman. It's not Superman, it's not Wonder Woman. So if the whole move is consolidate around the big three, why does Lanterns get the greenlight when Booster Gold, Paradise Lost, Waller — none of them do?
Mark Delaney: I don't think there's a clean answer.
Mark Delaney: Honestly it feels less like strategy and more like — whatever survives the room that week, you know? Reactive. And Supergirl is probably casting a shadow here — $126.25 million worldwide against a $170 million budget, that's a loss, and that has to be making everyone more gun-shy. Though I'll say it plain: the connection between that number and these specific TV cancellations is inferential. We don't actually know that's the lever being pulled.
Mark Delaney: But the pattern is real regardless.
Mark Delaney: And here's where it stops being an industry puzzle and starts being something you actually feel. Viola Davis built Amanda Waller across multiple films. That character — a Black woman running the room, calling the shots, not the sidekick, not the love interest — that's rare in franchise IP. Genuinely rare.
Mark Delaney: Waller was going to be her show.
Mark Delaney: And when you look at what got the pass — Waller, Poison Ivy, Catwoman — and then look at what survived — Lanterns, two guys headlining — you can't just wave away the question of whose stories get greenlit. That's not a gotcha. That's just what the list looks like.
Mark Delaney: Is it deliberate? Almost certainly not. Is it a consequence anyway? Yeah.
Mark Delaney: That's the part that stays with me — not that anyone sat in a room and decided representation loses. It's that the system produces that outcome without anyone deciding it. That's actually harder to fix.
Mark Delaney: But the next data point is already sitting there waiting.
Mark Delaney: DC Crime. Jimmy Olsen and Gorilla Grodd, reportedly still moving forward despite a pretty mixed fan reception. That's the one. That's the show that tells us something real about what DC is actually greenlighting versus what it's letting die.
Mark Delaney: Because if DC Crime goes forward — Jimmy Olsen, Gorilla Grodd, not exactly the big three — and Waller doesn't, and Paradise Lost doesn't… I mean, what does that list look like to you?
Mark Delaney: That's the honest question.
Mark Delaney: And look, I said earlier the big-three prioritization label might be the wrong frame, because Lanterns got through and Green Lantern is not Batman. That's a real complication. I'm not walking that back.
Mark Delaney: But if DC Crime — which nobody was clamoring for — survives while Viola Davis's show doesn't, the 'big-three strategy' framing isn't just imprecise, it's kind of useless as an explanation.
Mark Delaney: There's also something worth sitting with about where Waller even came from. First reported in development May 2022 — before Gunn and Safran were even appointed co-CEOs. Which means some of what happened to that show, maybe a lot of it, could be inherited failure. Not strategic. Just… a project that didn't survive a leadership transition.
Mark Delaney: That actually softens the read a little. Maybe.
Mark Delaney: And Booster Gold — even that's murky. David Jenkins said it's not moving forward, yeah. But there were earlier reports that DC was actively searching for a new writer. Which is — I don't know what that is. Not exactly dead, not exactly alive. Development limbo again.
Mark Delaney: The whole thing is murky.
Mark Delaney: Which brings me back to Gunn. The February 2026 denial — definitely not cancelled — that phrase doesn't go away. Kira Snyder was still in the WGA registry in June. So maybe the show was genuinely alive when he said it. And then something happened between June and August, and The Ankler report drops and it's done. That's a coherent sequence of events.
Mark Delaney: But the next time he publicly says a project isn't cancelled — and there WILL be a next time — that February record is going to be right there. That's just the reality now.
Mark Delaney: DC Crime moves, or it doesn't. Gunn says something, or he doesn't. And whatever happens next, we'll know a little more about what this version of DC actually is — not what it announced in January 2023, but what it's willing to fight for.
Mark Delaney: And that's kind of the clearest way I can put it. DC Studios isn't running a prioritization strategy. It's running a cancellation strategy — Waller, Paradise Lost, Booster Gold, The Authority, all quietly shelved, no real explanation — and then waiting to see if anyone connects the dots before the next denial expires.
Mark Delaney: James Gunn said Paradise Lost was definitely not cancelled. Six months later, Lesley Goldberg at The Ankler said it was dead. That gap — that's not strategy. That's just hoping the clock runs out before anybody asks the follow-up.
Mark Delaney: Viola Davis never got her show.
