A previously-untitled horror movie produced by Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn, which had been slated for a surprise release later this year, has received its title and a new release date.
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Now called BrightBurn, the film has been pushed back six months, from November 30 of this year to May 24, 2019.
Before being fired from Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 3 the week of Comic Con International in July, Gunn was expected to appear at the convention’s Sony panel with a mystery announcement. That announcement — a horror movie the filmmaker has apparently already completed production on — is apparently BrightBurn.
BrightBurn is the Elizabeth Banks-starring horror movie directed by Gunn’s longtime friend and collaborator David Yarovesky. Jackson Dunn (Shameless), David Denman (Power Rangers), Meredith Hagner, and Matt Jones also star.
Since being fired for numerous years-old tweets, which featured inappropriate humor of all kinds but most notoriously jokes about rape and pedophilia, Gunn’s profile outside of Disney has only risen. With more than 375,000 names on a petition to restore him to the director’s chair for the third and final Guardians film, other studios are seeing potential upside to hiring the filmmaker once he is free of his Marvel commitments. It now seems he might be, as Gunn has reportedly closed a deal to write and possibly direct a Suicide Squad movie for Warner Bros. and DC Entertainment.
Gunn has not directed a non-Marvel film in the time since he started the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise, but a movie he wrote — The Belko Experiment — was produced at Blumhouse by director Greg McLean. That script was quite old and had been floating around Hollywood for a while, and the production itself ended up conflicting with shooting on the Guardians films, so Gunn was fairly hands-off on it. That does not seem to be the case with the Sony project.
While a movie getting pushed back, especially amid scandal for one of the producers, could easily be seen as a retreat for Sony, THR (who first reported the date change) are viewing it as a net positive. It means that Gunn, who still enjoys broad fan support, will have more time to formulate a strategy should he decide to do publicity for the film, and it also means that the film will open up on Labor Day weekend, one of the most sought-after dates on the calendar.
BrightBurn will open up opposite Guy Ritchie’s Aladdin, a Minecraft adaptation, and the Dave Bautista vehicle Stauber.
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