Does James Gunn’s New Role Mean More DC Movies WIll Be Rated R?

This time next week, James Gunn and Peter Safran will officially begin their work as the co-CEOs and co-chairs of DC Studios, a newly-crafted movie studio to oversee all film, television, and animation efforts featuring characters from the massive DC stable. While Gunn’s projects within the Marvel Cinematic Universe have all been rated PG-13, his two DC projects—The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker—have both been rated R. Now that the filmmaker is overseeing DC Studios, the question begs to be asked: will the DCU be more adult moving forward?

Gunn has long dabbled in the art of edgier filmmaking from his formative days at Troma to Slither, Super, Brightburn and beyond. Given that DC is a massive superhero world, it’s likely the vast majority of offerings from the outfit will remain at a PG-13 or lighter level. After all, those are the movies that will end up seeing the biggest blockbuster returns. That doesn’t mean there won’t be some surprising rating shifts; in fact, there was one point where Black Adam was even rated R.

Why was Black Adam once R-rated?

At one point, there was a gruesome scene in Black Adam showing up just how aggressive the eponymous antihero could be. According to producer Hiram Garcia, the film would have been rated R if that scene was kept in the film.

“We really wanted to make sure that we honored the character of Black Adam. One of the things he’s known for is his aggression and violence, and to do a Black Adam movie that didn’t have that just wouldn’t have been authentic,” Garcia told Collider earlier this year. “So we always went into this knowing that we were going to push it as far as we did. We knew it was going to be a collaborative process with the MPAA to finally get it to where we were able, to get that rating, but we were able to pull it off. But it was really important for us to do that. And that’s something Dwayne was very committed to as well.”

Why was Black Adam changed to PG-13?

In the same interview, prodcuer BEau Flynn added a studio-mandated PG-13 rating forced a substantial amount of edits to the film.

“We did have to make a lot of edits, actually. There are some personal moments that we really love, but we had to let them go. But we never compromised, we never had to cut a scene. We had some really cool moments, and if you notice, there are some great moments when Black Adam is in the fly bike chase sequence and drops one of the intergang soldiers. Then there’s this great moment where the truck bounces over the body. But those are moments that you need and remember in these movies, you know what I mean? You can’t play it safe, and you have to go for it. And I think we have four or five of those. At one point we had about ten, and we were able to find some compromise with the MPAA on that.”

Black Adam is now in theaters.