Has the new head of DC been found?

Dan Lin, the executive producer behind such hits as the live-action Aladdin, The Lego Movie and It horror, is in talks to take over the role as head of DC, multiple sources tell The Hollywood Reporter.  . 

The role would include overseeing not only film but also television, with Lin reporting directly to the Warner Bros. CEO.  Discovery, David Zaslav, according to sources.

The proposed structure would bypass three separate department heads—the heads of Warner Bros.  Pictures, Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy, HBO/HBO Max head Casey Bloys, and Channing Dungey, Warner Bros. Television president.  — and it would put control of DC in the hands of one person.

Walter Hamada, the current head of DC Films, would step down from the role, according to sources.  A Warners insider says no negotiations are underway and no formal offer has been made, though other sources say the parties are discussing salary, reporting structure and the future of Lin’s production company, Rideback. 

If a deal goes through, it would cap one of the most intense executive searches in recent memory, one that has been scrutinized by rival producers and Hollywood executives as well as DC fans.

Zaslav said he was looking for Warners’ own version of Kevin Feige, the storied Marvel executive who helmed the rival comic book company’s movies and then its television portfolio, turning it into a multibillion-dollar pop culture powerhouse.

That’s an almost impossible question, but it didn’t stop the names of the executives from surfacing.  Emma Watts has emerged as an early contender, while in recent months the likes of Amy Pascal, Matt Tolmach, Sean Bailey and Greg Berlanti have been rumored to be in meetings or being pressured by savvy agency heads.

Lin’s name came up late in the game, but he has a champion at Warners, adviser Alan Horn, the former Disney chairman who ran Warners as president and COO in the aughts.  It was during this last stint that Lin worked for Horn, starting as a junior exec and working his way up to senior vp production.  He struck out on his own as a producer in 2008, but not before making films like The Departed and 10,000 BC.  He also oversaw the infamous and aborted Justice League movie that was to have been directed by George Miller.  (The 2007-08 Writers Guild of America strike and tax credit complications were factors that derailed it.)

Lin is a respected producer known for his intelligence and, in a city full of hype and egos, his willingness to find experts in areas that are not his forte.  He has worked on franchises – the Robert Downey Jr features starring Sherlock Holmes, the four Lego movies – as well as the hugely successful two-part adaptation of Stephen King’s It.  His resume ranges from blockbusters like the billion-dollar Aladdin to intimate dramas like the Oscar-nominated The Two Popes.  It follows the early August release of Universal’s comedy Jo Koy on Easter Sunday.

And he also has television experience, a key factor for the new position.  Lin and his company executive produced the three-season show Lethal Weapon on Fox and Walker, the Walker, Texas Ranger reboot that will begin its third season on The CW this fall.  He and his team are in post-production on the big budget live-action series Avatar: The Last Airbender for Netflix.

Lin has also shown ambitions beyond the screen.  His banner, Rideback, has a non-profit arm and several initiatives and scholarships that help BIPOC and budding entrepreneurs.  It’s unclear what will happen with Rideback, but one scenario, according to sources, is that Warner Bros.  Discovery would take some stake in the company.  Rideback will also continue to operate as a manufacturing entity and will be led by current president Jonathan Eirich.

If Lin takes over, he will replace Hamada, who joined DC in 2018, at a time when the brand was trying to reset itself after the bombing of Justice League (2017).  Hamada, who had a reputation as a gentle collaborator, kept a much lower profile than Marvel’s Feige, who is very much the face of the franchise.  Although rival Marvel Studios has a tightly-knit universe, DC under Hamada explored some stories that took place in separate universes, such as the Oscar-winning Joker (2019) with a gross of $1 billion and Matt Reeves’ Batman (2022). .  $769.2 million worldwide.  Sequels to both are in the works.

Hamada has built relationships with talent like Marvel favorite James Gunn, who directed The Suicide Squad (2021) and created the HBO Max spinoff Peacemaker, and has other projects in development at DC. 

However, Hamada’s tenure also highlighted the public pressures that come with leading DC.  For the past two years, Hamada has been the subject of critical tweets from Justice League actor Ray Fisher, which put the executive in the unusual position of running a film department while being publicly criticized by one of its stars.  In the summer of 2020, Fisher accused director Joss Whedon of abusive and unprofessional behavior on the set of the 2017 reshoots for Justice League, which Whedon oversaw after director Zack Snyder left.  Although Hamada was not at DC during the production of Justice League, Fisher accused the executive of trying to throw Whedon as well as producer Jon Berg “under the bus” to protect Geoff Johns, another producer of Justice League Fisher said it turned Whedon on.  Hamada was cleared of the studio’s investigations of any Justice League interference. 

Hamada was preparing to release three or four films a year between theaters and HBO Max when the Warner Bros. merger took place.  Discovery.  Some credit his exit as only partly due to DC’s right-wing, while other observers believe he didn’t have enough internal support from the previous AT&T regime. 

Lin will join DC at a time when Zaslav has vowed to reshape DC with a 10-year plan that he hopes will allow the brand to compete with Disney’s Marvel Studios, which has created the biggest film franchise in history. 

“We reset.  … We believe we can build a much stronger, sustainable growth business outside of DC,” Zaslav said on an Aug. 4 earnings call, just two days after pulling the plug on the $90 million HBO Max movie Batgirl that Hamada presided over.  “Within this, we will focus on quality.  We are not going to release any film before it is ready.  … DC is something we can do better.”

Aaron Couch contributed to this story.