James Gunn Addresses Rumor Chris Pratt Is Joining DCU

We’re still a ways away from the proper debut of James Gunn and Peter Safran’s DC Universe with this December’s Creature Commandos, but fans remain curious to see what shape the franchise ultimately takes. One prevailing question has been if and how the cast of Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy films for Marvel Studios will carry over into the DCU, with Sean Gunn currently being the the only main Guardians cast member, portraying the roles of Maxwell Lord, Weasel, and G.I. Robot. In a recent string of comments on Threads, Gunn confirmed that he and Chris Pratt, who portrayed Peter Quill / Star-Lord in the Guardians franchise, continue to talk about the possibility of him crossing over to DC.

“He’s a close friend,” Gunn answered. “We talk about that all the time.”

Will the Guardians of the Galaxy Cast Join the DCU?

Ever since Gunn was first appointed to his DC Studios role, fans have begun to campaign for certain DC roles for members of the Guardians cast, ranging from Pratt as Booster Gold, to Drax actor Dave Bautista as Bane or Hugo Strange. While speaking to ComicBook earlier this year about his work on The Garfield Movie, Pratt argued that either option is equally likely, and that he could very well end up appearing in both superhero sagas. 

“Well, it probably make more sense that I would be Star Lord again,” Pratt said in our interview, which you can check out above. “But anything is possible, and especially with James over at DC. Maybe there’s something that would be right over there. Maybe both. How about both? Let’s do both. I think it’s 100% both.”

What Is On the DC Universe Slate?

As Gunn and Safran revealed back in January of 2023, the initial DC Studios slate will include 2025’s Superman, 2026’s Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, and currently-undated movies The Brave and the Bold, Swamp Thing, and The Authority. It will also include the HBO Max television shows Waller, Booster Gold, Lanterns, Paradise Lost, and an animated Creature Commandos series. Reports have indicated that a live-action Teen Titans movie and an animated Jurassic League movie are in the works at DC Studios, although neither have been publicly confirmed.

“A lot of people think it’s going to be Marvel 2.0, and definitely I learned a lot of stuff at Marvel. I think that we have a lot of differences,” Gunn explained in 2023. “We are telling a big, huge, central story that is like Marvel, except for, I think that we’re a lot more planned out than Marvel from the beginning because we’ve gotten a group of writers together to work that story out completely. But we’re also creating a universe that is like Star Wars, where there’s different times, different places, different things, or Game of Thrones, where characters are a little bit more morally complex.”