Even the most fervent of Marvel fans can agree that having to watch so much content feels like homework, and James Gunn is hoping to avoid that with the new DCU.
After a number of rocky years at DC with a slate of films that never really materialised into a coherent connected universe, next week will see the arrival of Creature Commandos, the first project to be released under Gunn’s co-leadership of DC Studios, and also the inaugural project for the new DCU. There are of course still a lot of lingering questions left over from the old DCU, and in a recent interview with Collider ahead of Creature Commandos premiering, Gunn clarified some things about what’s canon, as well as how he feels about having to watch everything a movie universe has to offer.
When asked if The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker“>Peacemaker will be canon in the new DCU, given that Peacemaker season 2 will be, Gunn explained, “Peacemaker is pretty easy. Peacemaker Season 1 is basically canon outside of the appearance of the Justice League at the end, which you’ll see something about that in Peacemaker Season 2. Suicide Squad is probably a little bit looser.
“We know that Rick Flag Sr. is angry because his son was killed by Peacemaker, so we know that situation happened in the past, we have something to refer to to think of what it might be like that that happened, but that exists as canon because it was mentioned in Creature Commandos , not necessarily because it existed in Suicide Squad.”
Gunn also spoke about what he enjoys from DC, telling Collider, “A lot of what DC is, and the fun for me, really, is in the world-building, not just the story-building. I don’t think of DCU as being, “Oh, this is a story we’re telling over multiple films and TV shows about one big bad.” I don’t want to have to do, as an audience member, the homework to have to see every single thing. It is more of a connected universe that exists within one place, which is the DCU, which will have differences depending on who the artists and the directors and the production designers are that are making the shows.”
We all obviously know that Gunn directed all three Guardians of the Galaxy movies for Marvel, with the third one being directly influenced by the events of Avengers: Endgame, so this does feel like a small dig at Marvel (and a fair one at that, there’s too much you have to watch to actually understand what’s going on).
DC Studios under Gunn’s leadership certainly will have a broad range of projects, with the DCU itself obviously featuring films about Superman, Batman, Supergirl, even the Teen Titans, as well as shows like Creature Commandos, Peacemaker, Lanterns, and Booster Gold. There’s the Elseworlds stuff too, like The Batman 2 and that wild sounding CGI/ stop-motion/ live-action Robins film. You can’t say that Gunn isn’t interested in variety, at least.
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