In the last few months, Warner Bros. Discovery have been swinging the ax more than a possessed suit of armor in a Scooby-Doo cartoon. However, it seems that the end has finally arrived, and fans of the shows that have survived the cull can breathe easy as there will be no further cost-cutting cancelations in the immediate future. It had begun to feel like there was no end to the possible casualties of the Warner Media and Discovery Inc merger, as the joint company shed dozens of shows from HBO Max without warning, canceled shows including Westworld, and scrapped the almost completed Batgirl movie.

While speaking with Deadline, the CFO of Warner Bros. Discovery, Gunnar Wiedenfels, confirmed that the dawning of 2023 brings new challenges to the company. However, as far as tax write-offs and cuts to content are concerned, that “chapter” was closed off in 2022. He said:

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“We’re done with that chapter… That was very important to all of us to really use 2022 to leave the purchase accounting behind us leave those initial strategy changes behind us get it all, get it all out there in terms of our restructuring estimates, and then be able to turn the page and move forward.”

How Did Warner Media’s Merger End Up Deconstructing the DCEU?

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As well as the newly formed Warner Bros. Discovery throwing out every upcoming show and movie that was not guaranteed to turn a big profit, the most significant merger changes impacted one of Warner Bros.’s biggest IPs, the DCEU.

There is no one who can say that DC movies have been the guaranteed crowd-pleasers they should have been over the last several years. With the fallout of Zack Snyder’s departure from the franchise, non-DCEU movies like Joker and The Batman proving more successful than most of the loosely interconnected offerings, and a lot of fan disappointment, changes were always coming. Still, the colossal shake-up was beyond anything anyone anticipated.

The last few months have been a brutal rug-pull for many DC fans. This has seen Batgirl being canceled, a number of potential Michael Keaton appearances as Batman dropping from plans, and of course, Henry Cavill’s return seeming to be limited to a mostly redundant cameo in Black Adam. As stories about how Henry Cavill’s Superman return was both instigated and doomed to failure by Dwayne Johnson’s strong-arming of Warner Bros. executives, the focus is now moving to the new regime of James Gunn and Peter Safran and their soon-to-be-revealed reboot plan for the franchise.

So far, there have been only a few hints given as to what fans can expect to see from the newly branded DCU in the coming years. This includes a new young Superman, who will be seen in the early years of his time as a superhero on Earth. While James Gunn has teased futures for other Justice League members, such as Wonder Woman, he has not yet said exactly what form these will be. However, it seems that an official announcement outside Gunn’s frequent Twitter posts is not too far away, with the question being, will it steady the waters or stir up an even bigger social media storm?