Booster Gold: Danny McBride Dropped Out of DC’s HBO Max Series

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“It’s true y’all! I’m writing a pilot about this lovable goofball for @hbomax,” Jenkins wrote of the greatest hero history will never know. “Honored to work for James Gunn and very happy to inherit this project from Danny McBride, two of my creative heroes.”

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The former Our Flag Means Death showrunner went on to shout out Gunn’s Superman movie that launched the new DC Universe, adding, “Superman’s kind again and fun and he has a doggie! Let’s gooooooooo!”

Gunn, who serves as co-chairmen and co-CEO of DC Studios with Aquaman and The Suicide Squad producer Peter Safran, first announced the live-action HBO Max series when unveiling the DCU slate (titled Chapter 1: Gods and Monsters) back in 2023. This past February, Gunn and Safran revealed they were waiting on a “particular showrunner-creator” to helm the series without mentioning McBride by name.

“Maybe he fell out of love, maybe he got busy, but we had to pivot,” Safran said at the time. The update came a few months after Gunn said on the Happy Sad Confused podcast that “we’re not quite there yet in terms of Booster Gold. We’re just not quite there.”

“The scripts aren’t quite where I want them to be,” Gunn continued. “From the beginning, I’ve made it clear that the one thing that we’re gonna do at DC is, no matter what, we’re going to wait until the screenplays and the teleplays are ready before we shoot them. And I’m not going to shoot anything until I’m happy with it.”

Deadline broke the news Wednesday that Jenkins is writing the pilot and will serve as showrunner and executive producer should HBO Max pick up Booster Gold to series. Created by Dan Jurgens, who wrote and plotted 1986’s Booster Gold #1, Michael Jon “Booster” Carter is “a total fan-favorite,” Safran said during the DC Studios slate reveal in 2023, characterizing the former college football star as “a loser from the future who uses his basic future technology to come back to today to pretend to be a superhero.”

“I think of it as basically the story of a superhero’s imposter syndrome. How do you deal with that?” Gunn added. “[It’s about] how he tries to use this future technology to be loved by the people of today and what is really at the base of that. It’s a character story that’s going to be a very different type of show, and we’re talking to an actor about it now.” That actor apparently isn’t Oscar and Emmy nominee Kumail Nanjiani, despite online rumors.

HBO Max previously aired the Gunn-created adult animated series Creature Commandos and Peacemaker, both of which have second seasons in the works. The streamer will have its next DC Studios series when HBO’s Lanterns debuts in 2026.