James Gunn Bets the DCU on a Practical Grodd Puppet

Skyler Gisondo says James Gunn was developing The People v. Gorilla Grodd before cameras rolled on Superman. HBO Max locked an eight-episode half-hour comedy on August 21, 2026, and the shoot is already in Atlanta.

Gisondo, back as Jimmy Olsen, told Josh Horowitz on Happy Sad Confused that a full ape suit and puppetry are so present the show may need less CGI than planned. That is the wager, not a gag reel.

Gunn Pitched the Ape Trial Before Superman

Gisondo put the idea at the start of Gunn’s DCU, “even before the movie.” Gunn wanted a mockumentary inside that world and thought it would be great. The actor heard Dan Perrault and Tony Yacenda’s names when he landed Superman, then tried not to get excited, because projects like this vanish.

Gunn later said the same thing on the record. On August 21, 2026, the DC Studios co-chief called the series “our first foray into the true crime genre,” and added that, along with Lanterns, it was one of the shows he and Peter Safran “pitched to WBD before we came on board.”

The People Vs Gorilla Grodd, the new show from DC Studios, is coming to HBO Max. Our first foray into the true crime genre.  From the creators of American Vandal, starring Skyler Gisondo as Jimmy Olsen, Jimmy Tatro as Gorilla Grodd, Beck Bennett as Steve Lombard, Mikaela Hoover… pic.twitter.com/FsD4eTD5lP

— James Gunn (@JamesGunn) August 21, 2026

In June he shut down the idea that a Jimmy Olsen show had morphed into a Grodd show. “It didn’t become anything. It is what it’s always been, including pitching it as part of the package before I even started at DC.” He also called it both a Jimmy Olsen and a Gorilla Grodd show, and one of his favorite projects.

HBO Max then issued an eight-episode, straight-to-series order through DC Studios and Warner Bros. Television. Amy Gravitt, HBO’s head of comedy series, said she could not wait for “Jimmy Tatro’s captivating and hilarious portrayal of Grodd.” Lanterns had premiered five days earlier, on August 16. Gunn had bundled the two pitches years before either show existed on a slate.

FROM PITCH TO ATLANTA

1. May 1959: Grodd debuts in The Flash No. 106, by John Broome and Carmine Infantino.
2. July 2025: After Superman opens, a Jimmy Olsen series is reported in development.
3. November 2025: Perrault and Yacenda attach as showrunners, with the first season aimed at Grodd.
4. June 2026: Gunn says the show is both Olsen and Grodd, and that filming starts soon.
5. August 21, 2026: HBO Max greenlights eight half-hour episodes, with Yacenda directing all of them.
6. Early September 2026: Cameras roll at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.
7. September 24, 2026: Gisondo describes the practical Grodd, and Sara Gilbert joins as an important journalist.

Sixty-seven years sit between that first comic and the Atlanta lot. Gunn is not treating the ape as a cameo you cash in after the trinity is safe.

A Documentary Built Inside Metropolis

Perrault and Yacenda built American Vandal as a straight-faced true-crime parody, two seasons and 16 episodes on Netflix from September 15, 2017, to September 14, 2018. The Board of Jurors gave them a Peabody Award for American Vandal for a show that starts on a high-school prank and ends on what a hunt for the truth does to the people inside it.

They are running this series the same way. They write it, they executive produce it, and Yacenda directs every episode. Perrault is also in the cast. Eduardo Franco, who appeared in American Vandal, is in this company too. Tatro, who played accused student Dylan Maxwell in that show, now plays the accused ape.

We’re excited by the challenge of creating a series that feels less like an entry into the DCU and more like an artifact from it. A Daily Planet original documentary made for the people of Metropolis.

Tony Yacenda and Dan Perrault, HBO Max series announcement

Gunn and Safran said they wanted the darker and funnier streets of the DCU, with Jimmy spotlighting the Metropolis criminal justice system. Gisondo told Horowitz the tone sits in that Vandal world, “but with the ante kind of revved up a little bit,” because the setting is Metropolis.

On September 17, while promoting the film Primetime, Gisondo said the shoot is a lot of verité. Courthouse scenes run on CCTV cameras and feel like a play, the actors just going. “We’re only a little ways into it,” he said. The format is the bet. If the documentary feels fake, Grodd becomes a costume. If it feels like a Planet special, the ape has to hold a close-up.

Murder, Brain Consumption, and a Prison Interview

The studio logline is blunt. A superintelligent ape is convicted of murdering his father, the King of Gorilla City. In an eight-part “true” crime docuseries, Jimmy Olsen reopens the case and asks whether Grodd was wrongly convicted in one of Metropolis’s most famous murder trials.

Gunn also shared an in-universe Daily Planet notice with the order. It is the show describing itself as a piece of Metropolis media, which is the whole trick.

WHAT THE DAILY PLANET NOTICE CLAIMS

• The access: Olsen, a first-time director, gets exclusive interviews with Grodd inside Stryker’s Island Penitentiary.
• The charge: Grodd has long claimed innocence in the murder and brain consumption of his father, King Grodd, a crime he was convicted of in March 2021.
• The producers: Perry White is listed as supervising producer, with Steve Lombard and Cat Grant as producers.
• The other side: The series promises witnesses, experts, and Grodd’s new counsel at the Metropolis Freedom Project.

Perry White, in that same notice, says everyone thinks they know Grodd as the power-hungry gorilla who killed his father for the throne, then adds that once you look “beneath the fur,” there is more to that primate. The brain detail is the show’s own dark joke, not a footnote from a wiki.

On the comics page, Grodd is a first appeared in The Flash No. 106 problem, a hyper-intelligent telepathic ape who wants to rule simian and human worlds. Earlier live-action TV built him in a computer. Creature Commandos already gave this DCU a Grodd cameo in animation. The live-action version is a murder case with a camera crew, which is a stranger way in, and a more specific one.

How Practical Is the Grodd Suit?

Tatro has said the job is mostly voice acting, with his facial expressions mapped onto Grodd. That line, plus a person in fur on the Georgia Tech lot, led a lot of set watchers to treat the gorilla as a CGI placeholder. Gisondo, after working opposite it, described something closer to a creature performance.

He named Demetrius as the body actor in the suit. “No actor should ever complain ever again,” Gisondo said. The performer is in a full suit in Atlanta at about 100 degrees with matching humidity, cold air pumped in, the head coming off about every 10 minutes. Gisondo called him unbelievable.

GRODD ON THE GEORGIA TECH LOT

• The campus: Georgia Institute of Technology stands in for Metropolis University.
• The gown: Set images show Grodd graduating in cap and gown.
• The choir: He sings with an a cappella group.
• The serenade: He sings the Backstreet Boys’ “As Long as You Love Me” to a young woman.
• The voice: Clips from the lot appear to catch Tatro performing LMFAO’s “Party Rock Anthem” in character.

Gisondo has seen some of the singing. He said the puppet team did an incredible job, and that “practically we’re going to be able to get away with a lot and not need to rely as much on CGI as they thought.” That does not kill digital work. It says the physical Grodd is winning more of the frame than the plan assumed.

I thought it would be awkward acting across from him, kind of like tennis-ball acting. But the puppet is so, you look into his eyes and you immediately care about him, and you feel like you’re talking to somebody.

Skyler Gisondo, on Happy Sad Confused

If Olsen is going to host a documentary about whether a telepathic ape killed his father, the interview has to feel like an interview. A tennis ball on a stick will not carry eight episodes of that. A person in a suit, overheating on a college quad, might.

The Daily Planet Returns Without Clark

The series keeps the Planet bullpen from Superman and leaves Clark Kent and Lois Lane out of the billed company. Gisondo’s Jimmy hosts. Beck Bennett returns as Steve Lombard. Mikaela Hoover returns as Cat Grant. Wendell Pierce returns as Perry White. Mary Holland is Sandra, described as the series’s female lead in casting notices. Sara Gilbert is set to play an important journalist, with the part still unnamed; it is not Lane and it is not Grant.

THE NAMED ROLES SO FAR

Arian Moayed, Andrew Leeds, and Tim Baltz are also in the order in undisclosed parts. Franco and Perrault fill two more. No premiere date has been set. The show is in production, not on the calendar.

Some Replies Just Wanted the Flash

The first wave under Gunn’s announcement did not argue about puppet eyes. It asked for Wonder Woman and the Flash, the mainstays, the characters people can pitch to a cousin who does not read comics. Another strain treated a true-crime Grodd as the silliest live-action DCU idea yet, and wanted it because of that. Both reactions are about the same stake. Gunn is spending early universe space on a Planet documentary about a convicted ape, not on another origin.

The production is trying to make that ape watchable without a wall of pixels. Tatro’s voice and face still go on the character. Demetrius still has to get the head off every 10 minutes in Georgia heat. Gisondo still has to look into those eyes and run a murder interview as if Metropolis is watching.

On that Atlanta stage, the bet is already physical. Olsen looks at Grodd, and the puppet looks back.