“This looks like a job for Sean Gunn” is probably what director James Gunn said when casting his brother in Superman. Besides his role as Kirk in Gilmore Girls, the versatile actor is likely best known for playing both the Ravager Kraglin and the on-set Rocket Raccoon in Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy and the Avengers sequels Infinity War and Endgame. He also pulled double duty in 2021’s The Suicide Squad, playing the CG-animated Weasel and making a cameo as Calendar Man, and voiced both Weasel and G.I. Robot in the Creature Commandos animated series that served as a prelude to the new DC Universe (which officially gets up, up and away with the Superman movie on July 11).
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“I asked [James] recently if I can even say that I’m in the movie, and he was like, ‘You can say you’re kinda in the movie.’ So I’m kinda in the new Superman,” Gunn said at Canada’s Northern Fancon (via @DCFilmNews).
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It had been reported in the trades that Gunn would be playing Maxwell Lord, although it was unclear whether he might first appear in Creature Commandos, Superman, or one of the many announced projects on the DC Studios slate.
Gunn’s Maxwell Lord is part of an expansive cast that includes David Corenswet as the Man of Steel, Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane, and Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor. Other superheroes appearing in Superman include Edi Gathegi’s Mister Terrific, Isabela Merced as Hawkgirl, Anthony Carrigan as Metamorpho, and Nathan Fillion as the Green Lantern Guy Gardner, a lead character from 1987’s Justice League comic run by Keith Giffen, J.M. DeMatteis, and Kevin McGuire.
Justice League #1 (retitled Justice League International with issue #7) introduced Maxwell Lord IV, who briefly appeared to be monitoring the newly organized JLA (Justice League of America) from behind the scenes. The wealthy entrepreneur announced himself the official press liaison of the newly-reformed JLA and, starting with Justice League International #7, retrofitted the team as a United Nations-sanctioned international peace-keeping force that would operate independently with embassies around the globe.
It was later revealed that Lord was under the influence of the electro-mechano-organic Flash villain Kilg%re, and he was left a cyborg after being freed from Kilg%re. In 2003’s Formerly Known as the Justice League, a JLI sequel by Giffen, DeMatteis, and McGuire, Lord formed another team: the “Super Buddies,” consisting of the Ted Kord Blue Beetle, Booster Gold, Mary Marvel, Elongated Man, Captain Atom, and Fire.
Post-Infinite Crisis, which revealed Lord to be monitoring the world’s metahumans and costumed heroes, he aimed to “put Earth’s destiny in the hands of humans, not people pretending to be human.” As the “Black King” of the secret society Checkmate, he then hijacked the watchful Brother Eye satellite and launched an army of OMAC (Observational Metahuman Activity Constructs) as his answer to the world’s metahumans.
Superman flies into theaters July 11.
