'This is your fault': fans answer David Zaslav's goodbye to James Gunn

James Gunn posted his DC goodbye on Instagram this week — grateful for the "unique opportunity," candid that he disliked "the at-times corporate nature of the job" — after Skydance announced on November 9 that he and Peter Safran were done December 1. Among the condolences, one commenter stood out: David Zaslav.

"We're all grateful you took the job, James … your storytelling and creative vision for DC was magical. Can't wait for everyone to see the exceptional 'Man of Tomorrow' … Best time together James."

Zaslav is the CEO who hired Gunn in 2022 — and the CEO who then ran the bidding war that sold Warner Bros. Discovery to Paramount Skydance for $110 billion, said his own goodbyes in October, and handed Gunn's fate to David Ellison. The fans replying to him hold both facts at once:

"EXCUSE ME? This is all your fault for selling Warner Bros. knowing what was gonna happen. Spare us, please."

Others were shorter: "This is YOUR fault," "Bro thinks he's on the team," and, from a commenter tracking the balance sheet, "In the year that the studio made the most profit, you wanted to sell … go to hell."

The fans are right about the mechanism

Gunn wasn't fired by the man in the comments, but he was sold by him, and the distinction is thinner than Zaslav's warmth suggests. The chain runs in one direction: Zaslav takes the company to market, Skydance closes on October 6, Ellison and co-CEO Ynon Kreiz walk into Gunn and Safran's office on November 6 to deliver the news in person — per The Hollywood Reporter — and the announcement drops three days later. Whoever signed the termination, the sale was the decision; everything after it was paperwork with a delay.

That's what makes the "magical" comment land the way it does. A goodbye from the man who built the DCU's corporate home reads, under these replies, like a signature at the bottom of his own transaction — gratitude from the seller to the asset.

October 6: Zaslav's sale closes. November 6: the buyers walk into Gunn's office. November 10: Zaslav compliments the vision he sold.

The asset left on the lot

The strangest part of Zaslav's comment is that it names the stakes. Man of Tomorrow — Gunn's Superman sequel, in post-production for July 2027 — is now a $200-million-class tentpole that will be finished by its fired director and marketed by the studio that fired him, to a fanbase currently telling the old CEO to go to hell in his mentions.

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Hollywood has run this experiment before, and it rarely flatters the marketing department: a lame-duck auteur's last film either becomes a loyalty referendum or an orphan. Gunn stays on as director through delivery, Safran as producer, and Jeremy Latcham inherits the campaign. Next July, "from the fired guy" will either be the quiet asterisk on Superman's sequel or the reason half the audience shows up — and nobody at Skydance gets to pick which.

Previously we wrote: GTA 6 isn't coming for The Hunger Games — it's coming for Avengers: Doomsday's record