The DC movie-verse is getting a little bit smaller.

Long gestating DC Comics adaptations New Gods with director Ava DuVernay and screenwriter Tom King, and The Trench with director James Wan and producer Peter Safran are not moving forward at Warner Bros., the studio announced on Thursday.

“As part of our DC slate, some legacy development titles including ‘New Gods’ and ‘The Trench’ will not be moving forward,” the studio said in a statement. “We thank our partners Ava DuVernay, Tom King, James Wan and Peter Safran for their time and collaboration during this process and look forward to our continued partnership with them on other DC stories. The projects will remain in their skillful hands if they were to move forward in the future.”

The decision is certain to raise eyebrows with some DC fans as it comes just a few weeks after the debut of Zack Snyder’s Justice League, which officially closed the book on the “Snyder-verse”, i.e. the director’s unified narrative involving several of DC’s biggest characters. New Gods — which DuVernay and King have been developing since early 2018 — involves the “Fourth World” characters created by comics legend Jack Kirby that were heavily featured in the Snyder Cut, first among them the totalitarian villain Darkseid.

Knowing the pair’s penchant for promoting “woke” politics in their output, particularly DuVernay, this is probably for the best for everyone.

via Variety