James Gunn Moves From Marvel To DC, Takes On New ‘Suicide Squad’ Movie
James Gunn will be tackling a new ‘Suicide Squad’ movie, as the writer/director moves from Marvel to DC, it has been announced.
Gunn co-wrote and directed the first two ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ films, but was removed from the third after some controversial 10-year-old tweets were dug up by alt-right journalists. This resulted in production on the next GotG movie stalling after fans, and more importantly, the cast, showed strong support for Gunn and criticised Disney for their decision to fire him in an open letter.
It would be fair to say, DC has been struggling with their Extended Cinematic Universe. Some films, such as the first ‘Suicide Squad’, ‘Batman Vs. Superman’, and ‘Justice League’ really haven’t landed as well as they’d hoped. Gunn’s ‘Suicide Squad’ won’t be a sequel to the first movie, but an entirely new take. Whilst this is probably a positive move, given the reactions to the original film, it does muddy the waters of the DCEU again.
The first film has spawned a ‘Birds of Prey’ spin-off, with Margot Robbie returning as Harley Quinn, and adds Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Huntress and Jurnee Smollett-Bell as Black Canary. They have a ‘Joker’ origin film coming, but that sees Joaquin Phoenix as the Clown Prince, not ‘Suicide Squad’s Jared Leto. Matt Reeves has ‘The Batman’ film in development, but it will have someone other than Ben Affleck under the cowl. ‘Wonder Woman 1984’, ‘Aquaman’, and ‘Shazam!’ are basically in the can and heading for release. But overall, the entire franchise is messy, especially compared to Marvel’s streamlined Cinematic Universe. One possible solution would be to use the long-mooted solo ‘Flash’ movie as a reset, as it is rumoured to be based around the ‘Flashpoint’ storyline, which sees Barry (Ezra Miller) mess up the timeline. This could give them the opportunity to tie everything back together again into a cohesiveDCEU.
Whatever happens, ‘Suicide Squad’ would seem like the perfect fit for Gunn. If anyone can pull off a film about a weird collection of misfits forced to work together, it’s the director of ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’. As to who they decide to keep in the cast, and who gets switched out, it’s hard to say. However, due to the nature of ‘Suicide Squad’ being… well… a ‘Suicide Squad’… The roster of people involved changes on a fairly regular basis, so he isn’t short of characters from which to choose.
At the moment James Gunn’s deal is to write the script rather than direct. However, that may change once the scripting process is done. We’ll bring you more on ‘Suicide Squad’ when we have it.
