There are many great things to highlight about James Gunn’s Superman (as expressed in my CinemaBlend review from this summer), and Skyler Gisondo’s scene-stealing turn as Jimmy Olsen is most certainly one of them. Thankfully, this excellence has been widely recognized, and it has quickly prompted development of the character’s own spinoff series. The idea alone is exciting, but now anticipation is even higher, as a pair of talented showrunners have been hired to creatively guide the show, and the identity of the first season’s principal antagonist has been revealed.
Per The Hollywood Reporter, Dan Perrault and Tony Yacenda – best known for their acclaimed Netflix mocumentary series American Vandal – have been brought on to executive produce and showrun the Jimmy Olsen spinoff series (which apparently doesn’t have an official title yet). The trade report also says that the hyperintelligent ape Gorilla Grodd will be returning to live-action for the first time since appearing in the Arrowverse and will be “in the spotlight.”
First debuting for Netflix subscribers in 2017 and running for two seasons, American Vandal is a goofy and sharp satire of true crime shows, and Perrault and Yacenda’s filmography also includes Paramount+’s Players from 2022, a mockumentary following a team of professional video game players. Given this stylistic track record and the fact that the Jimmy Olsen series is going to principally be about the character’s work as a journalist at the Daily Planet, one can’t help but wonder what the hiring may say about the creative direction for the DC Studios project.
Rachel Brosnahan and David Corenswet aren’t expected to have much presence on the show, but James Gunn’s Superman includes a full roster of great characters in the Daily Planet’s offices – including Wendell Pierce’s Perry White, Beck Bennett’s Steve Lombard, and Mikaela Hoover’s Cat Grant. It’s not presently known if any of them will be a part of the series… but it would be pretty weird if they weren’t.
Fans paying attention to the birth of the DC Universe in the last year will note that this won’t technically be Gorilla Grodd’s first appearance in the new continuity, as he has a very brief cameo in the fourth episode of the animated series Creature Commandos (available to stream with a HBO Max subscription). However, that was part of an apocalyptic magical vision, so the appearance is really only tangentially connected to the canon. First introduced to DC Comics in 1959 and created by John Broome and Carmine Infantino, the brilliant, psychic ape is best known for being an antagonist of The Flash, but I expect it will be a delight to see Jimmy Olsen work to take Grodd down.
We’ll be waiting with baited breath for more details about this developing series, and it’s one of many upcoming DC Universe projects that we’re keeping an eye on – with the 2026 movie release calendar set to include both Craig Gillespie’s Supergirl (June 26, 2026) and James Watkins’ Clayface (September 11, 2026).