DC League of Super-Pets

Jared Stern pitched the project in 2012, in the Warner Animation Group’s early days, and was only signed to write and direct in 2018. The idea came from working at an animal shelter, where he saw older animals adopted far less often and asked what would happen if those pets got superpowers. The villain being a guinea pig runs on the same thought: he assumed a guinea pig kept as a lab subject would carry a grudge, made Lulu Lex Luthor’s test animal and the dark counterpart of the Krypto and Superman bond. About 70 animators worked two years, plus 3 to 4 months once the release slipped by a year. The sharpest turn is the scene explaining how Ace reached the shelter: he grabbed a toddler’s arm to stop her falling down a staircase, and the family read the bite as an attack and gave him up. It took $207.6 million worldwide on a $90 million budget and was the last production made under the Warner Animation Group name; the label became Warner Bros. Pictures Animation in 2023. A good fit if you want the Krypto and Ace rivalry read through adoption and abandonment. Not for viewers waiting on a Justice League conflict of its own; Batman and Wonder Woman are captured early and sit out a long stretch.