Darkseid may have finally made his DC movie debut, but you won’t see him on the big screen again for a long time.

Darkseid, and the rest of the characters of DC Comics’ “New Gods,” were expected to appear in a film adaptation directed by Ava DuVernay at some point in the future. But now that project is off, with Warner Bros. releasing a statement that the film, along with another DC project called The Trench that would have spun off from Aquaman, will “not be moving forward.”

DuVernay’s New Gods, which she has been developing with comic-book writer Tom King, was first announced in the spring of 2018. But even as Warner Bros. has beefed up its upcoming DC slate recently with projects based on Zatanna, Blue Beetle, and others, there’s been no mention of the New Gods film. According to The Hollywood Reporter, DuVernay’s New Gods “would have been a sprawling tale” but its fate was “complicated by the fact that its villain, Darkseid, just appeared as a major foil in Zack Snyder's Justice League and there was a desire to have space between the latter and any new appearances.” DuVernay is instead developing a television series for The CW based on DC’s recent comic Naomi.

As for The Trench, the project was initially announced around the release of James Wan’s Aquaman as a spinoff involving one of the creepy underwater races that appeared in that film. Per THR, “the upcoming Aquaman sequel was considered enough” Aquaman content for now. (If you ask me, a film based on a little-known group of monsters from an already secondary DC character’s mythos always sounded like a long shot for its own movie.)

In response to the news, DuVernay tweeted to Tom King that she was “upset that the saga...ends this way,” but that working on the project with him was “the adventure of a lifetime.”

Warners’ statement to THR claims that these two projects “will remain in their skillful hands if they were to move forward in the future.” So basically they’re comic-book character dead; dead, but they could come back to life at any point in the future if the fans demand it enough.

Gallery — Every DC Comics Character In Zack Snyder’s Justice League:

 

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