James Gunn Says Post-Credits Scenes Are a Nightmare (& Complicate Future Films)

James Gunn has said that the DCU will only employ post-credits scenes when they know they can pay them off, and he just explained why in more detail. At a press event which ComicBook attended, DC Studios co-chairmen Gunn and Peter Safran fielded a question about post-credits scenes and how they would factor into the over-arching plot that connects movies to each other. They hope to make bake the plot points into the movies themselves rather than teasing out connections before and after each story. Gunn thinks this gives writers more freedom in the long run, and avoids committing to a course too early.

“We know where we’re headed to with, you know, the larger story and so James makes sure that those building blocks are going to be put in place,” Safran said. “Then around that, there’s a tremendous amount of latitude in terms of what we do.” Gunn agreed, adding that it’s easier to give each screenwriter that freedom if there are no cliffhangers left over from the last release.

“But in terms of those post-credit scenes, like, they can be a real nightmare,” Gunn said. “I’ve done things before where I’ve put in post-credit scenes and, you know, like writing Guardians 3, and I was like, I wasn’t really sure if Adam Warlock should be in it, but I f—ing promised people. You know what I mean? And I’m like, oh, well, now, like, I’m writing the script and things change, and I’m like, he’s kind of, you know — cramming him in there. And I like him in the movie. I like the character, but it made it a little less elegant in some ways, the film. And so I’m really careful about those sorts of promises that we don’t know that we can deliver on.”

[RELATED: James Gunn Reveals Scrapped Characters From Creature Commandos (Could They Appear in the Live-Action DCU?)]

Gunn has talked about this before, hinting that post-credits scenes would be minimal in the DCU and promising that they wouldn’t be essential to the plot. Last year when ComicBook visited the set of Superman, Gunn explained this approach more broadly, saying that he doesn’t want each movie to simply feel like an ad for the next installment. In the case of Superman, he predicted there would only be “maybe two little things, two moments” that were there to tease the future of the DCU.

“If something’s there just to set up something else, f— it. I even say that,” Gunn said last summer. “If that [post-credits scene] works in tandem with setting up characters that exist in other media, then that’s great. If this sets up stuff in Peacemaker, which it does, then that’s great. But that is never, ever, ever, with me, going to be something that I’m going to sacrifice even a moment or a beat in a story for, especially a movie. With TV, you’ve got a little bit more leniency to be able to do that. But in a movie, every beat has to be in there for the movie itself.”

Gunn did acknowledge that it gets more difficult for each movie to “stand by itself” as a franchise like this goes on. However, he said that it’s still worth trying to minimize the barriers to entry, using Guardians of the Galaxy 3 as an example. “You’d be better off seeing the first two Guardians, but even [Avengers:] Infinity War, I explained it in an elevator, the whole plot,” he said. “It’s like trying to keep things as simple as possible so you don’t have to have homework, especially TV shows that some people aren’t into.”

It will be especially interesting to see how Gunn’s philosophy on the connective tissue between movies plays out when the DCU is out of his hands. Gunn was the creator and an executive producer on Creature Commandos, and is the writer-director of Superman, coming this summer. He’s also the showrunner of the next title we’ll see after that, Peacemaker. It won’t be until June of 2026 that we see something with less involvement from Gunn — Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, written by Ana Nogueira and directed by Craig Gillespie. After that, the franchise will open up with a lot of different off-screen talent, and we’ll see what they do with the increased creative latitude.

The DCU makes its big screen debut with Superman on July 11th, 2025. Peacemaker Season 2 premieres in August on Max. The first season is streaming there now, along with Creature Commandos.