Category: James Gunn

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James Gunn says the Superman sequel will focus equally on Lex Luthor

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After a prolonged period of comic book movie fatigue, James Gunn’s Superman came out in theaters back on July 11. Prior to its release, there was a lot of both skepticism and hope that Gunn could successfully reboot the DC franchise after a long, uneven attempt to compete with the Marvel movies. (I really didn’t like either cut of The Justice League, sorry not sorry.)

Gunn’s gambit paid off, and as of September 2025, Superman has made more than $614 million globally. A follow-up movie, titled Man of Tomorrow, is already in the works with an April 2026 production start date and a targeted July 9, 2027 release date. Gunn appeared on Howard Stern’s show recently to share some more details about MoT. According to Gunn, the next movie will have a heavy focus on Superman and his arch-nemesis Lex Luthor working together. In fact, it will be just “as much a Lex movie as it is a Superman movie.”

Some more intel on James Gunn‘s Superman follow-up (not sequel), Man of Tomorrow. The Superman director and DC Studio Co-Boss told Howard Stern recently that the next movie is “a story about Lex Luthor and Superman having to work together to a certain degree against a much, much bigger threat.”

“It’s more complicated than that,” said Gunn, “It’s as much a Lex movie as it is a Superman movie.”

Gunn immediately went into developing the next DC movie involving Superman in the wake of his movie’s $614M-plus global success. Previously, it was reported that it would be more about the new characters introduced in his Superman, i.e. Green Lantern, Hawk Girl, etc. Superman did so well for Warner Bros, that they were able to push New Line’s Mortal Kombat II to mid-May next year as potential tentpole; the studio already reportedly in the black this year in regards to ROI, sources tell Deadline, before Paul Thomas Anderson’s Leonardo DiCaprio poltical action pic One Battle After Another opens.

“Milly Alcock, who plays Supergirl, might be the best bit of casting I think I’ve ever done in my entire life,” said Gunn.

In talking about the HBO series Lanterns, Stern told Gunn he’s always believed that Green Lantern could beat up Superman.

Gunn agreed: “Absolutely, he’s pretty powerful.”

[From Deadline]

I don’t know about y’all, but all I got from this was that we are in for a Superman/Lex buddy comedy! Just kidding. Superman and Lex Luthor have teamed up in the comics before, so the precedent is there, but they always remain arch-enemies. I do look forward to more Nicholas Hoult. He was a really great Lex Luthor, and I’m glad he’s getting his flowers. Mr. Rosie and I saw Superman in theaters. I liked it a lot more than I expected to. A big part of that was Hoult’s portrayal of Luthor. So many people, myself included, were lukewarm about Hoult’s casting when it was announced but he did such a great job with the role that I’m glad to stand corrected.

As for the rest of Man of Tomorrow’s potential plot, the common consensus among fans regarding the identity of its big bad is that it’s Brainiac, an alien cyborg that’s obsessed with collecting all of the universe’s knowledge. He’s widely considered to be one of Superman’s biggest enemies. This feels plausible. I’m also intrigued to see how season 2 of Peacemaker fits into all of this. I don’t know if Gunn is going to fully save the DCU movies, but I appreciate that he’s giving it his best effort.

Photos credit: Julie Edwards/Avalon, Dave Allocca/Starpix/INSTARimages, Jeffrey Mayer/Avalon, Cat Morley/Avalon, Julie Edwards/Avalon

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James Gunn

James Gunn on the #1 industry problem: movies being made without finished scripts

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James Gunn bounced back rather spectacularly after being fired from Marvel years ago. He was fired after some deeply problematic old tweets came out, and he did not go away quietly. Like most white guys who have a track record of making money for the studios, Gunn was given a million second chances. He’s currently 58 years old and the co-CEO of Warner Bros’ DC Studios, and Gunn directed the new Superman movie. Which is why he gave a lengthy interview to Rolling Stone – go here to read. A lot of the superhero and comic-book talk went over my head. It’s fine if that’s your thing, but on Martin Scorsese’s side on that issue – hilariously, Gunn once said that Scorsese was clout-chasing superhero movies. However, Gunn said one thing in this interview which I think is so, so important. Some highlights:

His movie was originally called ‘Superman: Legacy’ and now it’s just Superman: “Yeah. I’m always cutting. “Legacy” was really — we do something called a premortem. A premortem is you get together with your group that’s doing the project. It’s usually about a couple months before shooting, and you go, hypothetically, “If it’s an epic disaster, what are the things that we’re doing today that are going to cause it to be an epic disaster? Everyone here can speak freely.” The things you find on other productions are the things that people are whispering. “Oh, God, I don’t know why they cast that actor — he doesn’t fit the role.” Or, “The production designer’s never on time.” One of the things I brought up was, it was called Superman: Legacy. Even though I was the one that gave it that title, I just wasn’t sure. First of all, I’m sick of the superhero title, colon, other-name thing. And then also it seemed to be looking back when we’re looking forward, even though it does have to do with legacy in the movie itself. And everybody was like, “Oh, yeah, no, change it.”

He was able to crack the Superman story: “It was Krypto. The beginning of the movie is the first thing I wrote, with Krypto coming to Superman in the snow and Krypto taking him home. That really was about the tone of the whole movie. It’s a flying dog who wears a cape, but that led immediately to the robots, to the fortress rising from the ground, to the device that isn’t in the comics — the giant magnifying glass, which powers him up more quickly than just the regular sun would. Bringing all those elements into a Superman movie in a way that hasn’t happened — not to mention that he exists in a world where superheroes, or some form of metahumans, have existed for 300 years. It’s just a different thing.

Eddie Murphy once said that nearly every bad movie happens because of Hollywood’s habit of setting a production date before they have a finished screenplay. “Yeah, totally. Listen, you can do everything right and make a bad movie. I’m really compassionate towards people that put their all into a movie. I know some people that were my former workers at Marvel — people who made some of the worst movies. There were people that were lazy and didn’t put their time in. And then there were other directors that worked really hard and maybe didn’t have the best movie come out, but they did everything they could. But I do believe that the reason why the movie industry is dying is not because of people not wanting to see movies. It’s not because of home screens getting so good. The number-one reason is because people are making movies without a finished screenplay.

[From Rolling Stone]

I’m soooo glad that someone is saying it outloud and that someone is involved with studio franchises. It’s become a HUGE problem – studios are setting the release date for a film and reverse engineering everything from there, including the script. They know when a production should start but not what the story should be or what the actors are going to say. If you followed the years-long Star Wars-at-Disney saga, the “unfinished screenplay” issue was the biggest problem. That’s basically the reason why they’ve had to put the films on hold for years, because they were making Star Wars movies without completed scripts, without stories locked down in preproduction. The superhero movies have had a similar problem for years – they knew the big setpiece action sequences they wanted and they built the story around those setpieces, even if the stories didn’t make much sense. Finish your scripts before the production starts! This is not hard.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

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James Gunn Movies Nicholas Hoult

James Gunn confirms that Nicholas Hoult will play Lex Luthor in Superman: Legacy

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The casting for James Gunn’s Superman: Legacy has been a whole ass event. Casting their Clark Kent and Lois Lane was so much a thing that there were even articles written about the finalists. There’s a lot of pressure on this movie, which stars David Corenswet as Clark Kent/Superman, Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane, Skyler Gisondo as Jimmy Olsen, and Sara Sampaio as Eve Teschmacher, to help reinvigorate DC Studios’ struggling franchise. Written and directed by Gunn, it’s supposed to be the first film released under his new, rebooted DC Universe. It’s been called a “workplace origin story” that will explore Superman’s heritage by both his Kryptonian birth parents and his adoptive parents in Kansas. A few weeks ago, news leaked that Nicholas Hoult was cast as villain Lex Luthor. Earlier this week, Gunn finally confirmed the rumors via a post on Threads.

James Gunn took a moment to confirm that Nicholas Hoult will, in fact, be playing Lex Luthor in Superman: Legacy and gave a bit of insight into what fans can expect from his take on the villain. The co-chair and co-CEO of DC Studios posted a photo of him and Hoult on Threads and shared that the two had dinner to celebrate the official casting.

“I couldn’t be happier,” Gunn wrote. “We went out to dinner last night to celebrate & discuss how we can create a Lex that will be different from anything you’ve seen before and will never forget. ‘But, James, we heard this weeks ago, why didn’t you tell us it was true?’ Because, although we were discussing it, it wasn’t final until a couple days ago and I don’t want to tell you all something that isn’t certain.”

News broke in November that Hoult was in talks to portray the classic villain in Gunn’s upcoming Superman movie, which will follow the Man of Steel as he balances his Kryptonian heritage with his human upbringing.

Superman: Legacy is expected to hit theaters July 11, 2025.

[From The Hollywood Reporter]

Look, I’m a giant nerd and although I may grumble, I generally can’t resist anything superhero-related. But even I’m like, “Do we really need another Superman movie?” He’s like the most overdone superhero outside of Batman at this point. However, I also said that about the Robert Pattinson Batman movie and ended up really enjoying it, despite it being 75 hours long. (Seriously, if it’s not a Lord of the Rings, it does not need to be more than 120 minutes, TOPS. You can tell good stories in under two hours!)

Anyway, I am very intrigued by this Nicholas Hoult casting. I mean, it’s less random than when Jesse Eisenberg played Lex, so there’s that. I grew up with two different Lex Luthors: John Shea in Lois and Clark and Michael Rosenbaum in Smallville. They’re always the ones I see in my mind. When I picture Hoult and ‘superhero,’ I can’t help but picture him as Beast from X-Men. I like Hoult, though, so I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and see what he can do with the role. Honestly, I don’t know whether or not I even want to invest more hours of my life on another DCU movie. They’ve been hit or miss for me, but mostly miss.

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Photos credit: Jeffrey Mayer / Avalon, Robin Platzer / Twin Images / Avalon, Getty and via Threads

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Henry Cavill: ‘I will, after all, not be returning as Superman’

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Hey, remember when I told you I was happy Henry Cavill was returning as Superman? And thank goodness because of the nonsense that had him leaving The Witcher and being replaced by Liam Hemsworth? Yeah, well… my bad. Both James Gunn and Henry told fans yesterday that although everyone still loves each other (uh-huh) Henry is not coming back as Superman. The hell?!

Henry posted the following:

James posted this to Twitter:

Peter & I have a DC slate ready to go, which we couldn’t be more over-the-moon about; we’ll be able to share some exciting information about our first projects at the beginning of the new year.

— James Gunn (@JamesGunn) December 15, 2022

But we just had a great meeting with Henry and we’re big fans and we talked about a number of exciting possibilities to work together in the future.

— James Gunn (@JamesGunn) December 15, 2022

Those two people did not attend the same meeting. Henry sounds disappointed, as he should be. Not only was he asked to return, he was told to announce it. This is the second franchise that he cared about that he is being screwed out of. It’s pretty clear that he left The Witcher due to the show’s refusal to stick with the source material. But at least he had Superman to fall back on. Except that now they’ve gone in a different direction on Superman. I’m not worried about Henry, he has more in him than the DC franchise. He’ll be fine. But after all the love he got when he announced his return, not to mention psyching himself up to take on the Superman mantle once again, this must have been a heavy blow.

And James sounds positively gleeful about ripping the job away from Henry. What future projects will they include Henry in? He can’t be another superhero, because we will only see him as Superman wearing another guy’s cape. I realize Gunn is capable of other subjects, but let’s face it, DC is going to be his focus for a bit. This sucks. Not to mention we don’t need another G-D origin story on Superman. It would be infinitely more interesting to watch these superheroes, especially those who yield the amount of power Superman does, to exist in the world we live in today. What about Superman in the world of Covid, a situation he actually could not save? Superman at full power but helpless – that’s a story I want to see. But no. We’re just going to erase and start again. I guess casting for a new Lex Luther is coming next. *yawn*

Photo credit: Cover Images

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James Gunn Martin Scorsese

James Gunn thinks Martin Scorsese needed to clout-chase Marvel for attention

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Premiere Of Disney And Marvel's

In 2019, Martin Scorsese gave many interviews in support of his then-current film, The Irishman. The Irishman was produced by Netflix and it premiered on Netflix and it also got a limited theatrical release. Which is pretty much the current model now for so many dramas and art films – limited theatrical releases in a couple of cities, concurrent with a film release on streaming. This is because the business of theatrical releases has changed dramatically over the past twenty years, and now theater chains are really only interested in tentpoles, cartoons, superhero films and franchises. Scorsese spoke about that shift repeatedly in 2019, saying that in his opinion, Marvel films are “not cinema” and that they amounted to “theme parks.” He went further in a NYT op-ed, saying that superhero films have no “revelation, mystery or genuine emotional danger. Nothing is at risk. The pictures are made to satisfy a specific set of demands, and they are designed as variations on a finite number of themes.”

So, people were really mad that Marty took a sh-t all over their favorite Marvel films. They called him old and out-of-touch. Marvel actors were sent out to defend the honor of their films and it was all just so stupid. Marty had a point, in my opinion, but if you enjoy Marvel films, good for you. Don’t let Marty yuck your yum. The reaction from Marvel fans was ridiculous, and it continues to be ridiculous to see the Marvel people attempt to drag a man who should be regarded as an elder statesman of cinema (and a man who is actually making a good point). Now we’ve got James Gunn – the same man who was (briefly) thrown out of Marvel for his history of disgusting tweets – trying to talk sh-t about Marty.

James Gunn is the latest director to address Martin Scorsese’s divisive 2019 Marvel-bashing incident, claiming that the “Goodfellas” director was simply attempting to garner attention for “The Irishman.” The “Guardians of the Galaxy” director dropped the criticism while promoting his upcoming film “The Suicide Squad” on MTV’s “Happy Sad Confused” podcast.

“I just think it seems awful cynical that he would keep coming out against Marvel — and then that is the only thing that would get him press for his movie,” Gunn, 55, told pod host Josh Horowitz. “He’s creating his movie in the shadow of the Marvel films, and so he uses that to get attention for something he wasn’t getting as much attention as he wanted for it.”

[From The NY Post]

James Gunn is a man who was briefly fired from Disney/Marvel because he tweeted disgusting and creepy sh-t about pedophilia. This same man thinks Martin Scorsese – one of the godfathers of modern filmmaking – is a clout-chaser who only name-dropped “Marvel” to promote his own film. The director of The Suicide Squad thinks the director of Taxi Driver/Goodfellas/Age of Innocence/Casino/Raging Bull NEEDS to name-drop “Marvel” to get attention and promote his latest movie. I’m sorry, but James Gunn is a f–king idiot. Disrespectful to the elders of his filmmaking community too.

After being rightly bashed on Twitter, James Gunn tweeted this. Nope.

Also for the record, Martin Scorsese is probably the world’s greatest living American filmmaker. I love & study his films & will continue to love & study his films. I disagree with him solely on one point: That films based on comic books are innately not cinema, that’s all. 🙏 https://t.co/By9IBe8HAm

— James Gunn (@JamesGunn) August 4, 2021

Los Angeles Premiere Of Netflix's 'The Irishman'

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

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James Gunn on Margot Robbie’s rat: Rats are the best small animal pet in the world

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Margot Robbie and the cast of the 'Suicide Squad‘ at Jimmy Kimmel Live!


Margot Robbie, John Cena and James Gunn were on Jimmy Kimmel Live, with Anthony Anderson hosting. They’re promoting The Suicide Squad, the sequel to Suicide Squad, out August 6th in theaters and streaming on HBO Max. I’m not into DC movies and have not seen the original, I’m sorry! Apparently rats feature prominently in Suicide Squad as there’s a character who can control them called Rat Catcher. They worked with multiple rats on set. I remember a story about Jared Leto giving Margot Robbie a live rat after the first movie. In the interview, Margot confirmed that she had a pet rat when they made the first film although she said she had to give it away after her landlord found out about it. Then director James Gunn started extolling the virtues of rats.

James Gunn On the rats in the movie


James Gunn: We have a rat who by the name of Jaws who we worked with a lot and then a rat by the name of Crisp Rat, who which is named after my friend Chris Pratt of course. They were our main acting rats they played Sebastian the rat in the movie. Then we had about 300,000 animated rats.

Margot on her pet rat, Rat Rat


Margot Robbie: I had a pet rat when we did the first movie. His name is Rat Rat. When we shot Suicide Squad Mr. J gave me a rat and he became a beloved pet. We called him Rat Rat he liked beer and bath time. Then the landlord of the place I was renting found out I had a rat and said Rat Rat had to go. Then Jai Courtney who plays Captain Boomerang said I’ll take Rat Rat and then his landlord wasn’t cool with that either. Then one of the costumers on the job took Rat Rat and then she had to give Rat Rat away. She gave him to Guillermo Del Toro’s daughters apparently have rats so in the end Rat Rat’s a bit of a star f-ker really.

James Gunn loves rats


James Gunn: I made the Guardians of the Galaxy movies and after we put Rocket in that movie suddenly I got all these notes from all over the world of people having pet raccoons and they’re terrible pets. Rats are the best small animal pet in the world. They’re better than gerbils, they don’t bite like hamsters, they’re not like crazy stupid like guinea pigs, they’re as smart as a horse. For people that want a small pet a rat is the very best.

[From Jimmy Kimmel Live on YouTube]

I’ve told this story here before, but I had a pet rat for a short period of time in college. My goth friends had one and they kept telling me how smart they were as pets. The first day I had her, the rat figured out how to get out of her cage so I put a heavy book on the top of it. She continued to smack her head on the top to open it and you can figure out how this story ends. RIP Jessica the rat. So I agree that rats are smart, but I don’t have much firsthand experience with them as pets. How weird is it to give someone a pet, especially if they’re not a family member? At least a rat is small and like Margot found out, you can give it away to a loving home. Do you truly want a smart pet though? Sometimes it’s best to have a dumb to average pet, as I learned the hard way.

Here’s the interview. I didn’t have a high opinion of James Gunn before this given what I know about him, but he came across OK. John Cena was doing a bit and it was kind of cute. I always like watching his interviews. Margot is so cute and you can tell she’s a hard worker but chill.


I know this is a Quokka but it’s so cute!

Hedghog because she doesn’t have any pics of her rat on her Instagram!

Here’s a rat. They are cute!


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photos credit Backgrid and @firecloak and @ok_milka on Unsplash