Speaking at a press event attended by /Film’s Jenna Busch, James Gunn and Peter Safran answered questions from journalists about their newly-unveiled DC Universe slate, including where there are any characters they’re not allowed to touch — like Joker. “No one is off the table!” they replied simultaneously and without hesitations. “[Joker] is under us too,” Gunn added. “Everything is under us.”
DC has been infamous in the past for limiting the characters that could appear in certain mediums based on whether they were being used elsewhere. It’s understandable to a degree, with the company hoping not to have clashing views (and presumably, clashing toy designs) of their characters. This is why Batman, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern have gone decades in-between live-action appearances on the small screen, and also why Harley Quinn and the rest of the Suicide Squad were dropped from The CW’s “Arrow” TV series when David Ayer’s “Suicide Squad” movie was put into development.
Thankfully, they’ve started to relax a bit in recent years, allowing Batman to pop up in live-action TV shows like “Batwoman” and “DC’s Titans” (where he even did the Batusi!), and Superman to appear in the Arrowverse’s “Supergirl” series prior to leading his own show, “Superman & Lois.” Though the news is kind of unexpected, given that Safran and Gunn have the keys to the entire DC kingdom and are already thinking multiverse, it is exciting nonetheless to know that they can dig deep into the full gallery of characters in the DC Universe.