Later this 12 months, it’ll have been a decade since Arrow hit The CW, establishing the primary parts of an entire DC universe on the small display that may change the face of superheroic TV as we all know it. Now its transformation would possibly attain an altogether completely different finish, as the printed community that performed house to Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, and extra goes up on the market.

The Wall Street Journal reported in a single day that Warner Bros. and ViacomCBS—who’ve had a joint stake within the community since its institution in 2006—are planning to dump The CW. The report cites a historic lack of profitability for the community as a part of the explanation for the sale, a problem in the previous couple of years that has been compounded additional as each Warner and ViacomCBS renegotiated gross sales for worldwide broadcast rights for CW exhibits—a major income for the community—in an effort to carry these broadcasts in-house on platforms like HBO Max and Paramount+.

While The CW was established as a three way partnership, the success of Greg Berlanti’s DC Comics universe on the community—beginning with Arrow and spawning 7 completely different collection throughout the “Arrowverse”, in addition to two animated spinoffs for CW’s personal streaming platform, CW Seed—meant the majority of the community’s content material primarily got here from Warner Bros. But now that the studio has HBO Max, Warner is pushing that platform as the unique house for its TV streaming choices, together with for the present CW DC collection like Flash, Batwoman, Superman & Lois, and Legends of Tomorrow, the upcoming Naomi, and simultaneous releases resembling Stargirl.

This wouldn’t be the primary time Warner has shunted DC initiatives from one platform over to Max, after all. After briefly concurrently airing them via each providers, Warner shunted a lot of the unique DC Universe streaming collection resembling Doom Patrol, Young Justice, Titans, and Harley Quinn over Max totally as soon as the service was established. Should the CW sale undergo, it’s probably the identical will occur for future seasons of the DC CW collection, and presently deliberate future exhibits like Gotham Knights.

But it additionally presents an fascinating future for these exhibits: Supergirl (which initially began out at CBS, earlier than transitioning to the CW after one season) got here to a detailed final 12 months after six seasons, and The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow have been operating for many of the final decade. Could a transfer to HBO Max as a devoted house for DC TV carry a couple of pure finish level for a few of these collection? Could it give a few of them the shot within the arm to maintain carrying on? It stays to be seen. But a decade on from the place the live-action DC TV universe first began, its future is beginning to appear like one thing nobody may’ve imagined the primary time Oliver Queen donned his inexperienced hood to guard Starling City.

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