DC Studios’ James Gunn Calls Comic-Con Experience the Best Weekend of His Life

As the first chapter of James Gunn and Peter Safran’s new vision for the DC Universe takes shape, it’s an example of his love for comics. The filmmaker and co-CEO of DC Studios even revealed how a weekend spent at a local Comic-Con turned out to be the best weekend of his life. Gunn and Safran held a small event for the press as they revealed Chapter 1: Gods and Monsters. Gunn already has a successful career directing films like The Suicide Squad and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, along with guiding the second season of Peacemaker. So he’s always asked why he would take on the challenge of co-leading DC Studios. 

“People have been asking me a lot, why did I take this job?” Gunn said during the press event on Monday. “I knew that there was going to be a lot of hitches, a lot of problems, but as many of you know, comic books are in my blood. These characters are in my blood. I was sort of an oddball child who didn’t really have many friends and loved comic books. Loved DC comic books, loved Marvel comic books. I didn’t interact well with my peers and my parents sent me to a psychiatrist when I was 11 years old to try to figure out what was wrong with me because I never went to school. I just stayed home, read comic books, wrote and drew comic books. And the psychiatrist said to my dad, ‘Why don’t you take an interest in what your son does?’ Because my dad’s very much a St. Louis, Missouri guy. Loves Cardinals baseball, loves things that I didn’t care about. And my dad did. And it was really the most wonderful thing my dad ever did was he started asking me about comics.”

Gunn then spoke about how spending a weekend at a Chicago Comic-Con brought him closer to his father.

“He drove me for the weekend to Creation Comic-Con in Chicago, which was probably the greatest weekend of my life, even still to this day I can say, because my wife isn’t here,” he said. “But it was amazing. We met Ernie Chan and talked to all these creative people, and it was just the best. We bought a bunch of comic books. Happiest moments of my life are walking upstairs and seeing my dad reading a copy of Superman. And I wanted to take care of these characters. And we all know it’s been a fucked up road for many of them for the past few years, and things haven’t been together. And I really thought it is a challenge, but I think it’s a possibility to create something really wonderful with these characters. I can’t go into politics, I can’t do anything with science. So the only thing I can do for this planet is to create stories about love. And that’s what I think that we can do over the next eight to 10 years.”

James Gunn Doesn’t Have Time for Peacemaker Season 2

Viola Davis is returning as Amanda Waller in a new HBO Max series titled Waller. At the same press event for the DCU’s Chapter 1: Gods and Monsters slate, Peter Safran pointed out Waller is set between Seasons 1 and 2 of Peacemaker with Gunn adding that he doesn’t “have time to do Peacemaker Season 2 right now.”

Instead, fans can expect much of the supporting cast from Peacemaker to appear in Waller.

“This is also going to have some of Team Peacemaker in it as the regulars on the show,” Gunn said during the event. “This basically follows up Peacemaker. We have two great creatives working on it: Crystal Henry, who is a writer on Watchman, and Jeremy Carver, who created Doom Patrol, have this incredibly marvelous story worked out that I think is really fantastic and HBO loves and they’re putting this all together.”

Let us know your thoughts on the newly-announced DC slate in the comments.

Photo credit via Daniel Knighton/Getty Images