James Gunn Reveals The Loophole That Could Break His First DCU Rule

Back in 2023, it was reported that James Gunn was committed to only allowing actors to play one on-screen role in the new DCU. The technicality there, of course, is that voice roles don’t count (as Superman‘s Michael Rooker, Sean Gunn, and Alan Tudyk already proved), but now Gunn has revealed how he’d get around actors who played confirmed DCU canon characters reappearing in other on-screen roles, if he wanted to.

That rule-breaking loophole came thanks to a conversation on Peacemaker: The Official Podcast, on which Gunn appeared alongside Chukwudi Iwuji (who played Clemson Murn in Peacemaker Season 1). As well as confirming his DCU canon status, Gunn also revealed how he could get around his own casting rule, allowing Iwuji to potentially reappear in another role:

“I think Clemson Murn is canon… Maybe his face might not be canon if we want to cast Chuk as something else in the DCU. But also, Chuk could end up being some other character, maybe [one] that isn’t so humanoid.”

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Gunn actually took a similar approach with regular collaborator Michael Rooker, who played the killed-off Savant in 2021’s The Suicide Squad and voiced a Superman Robot in Superman before being cast as Red St. Wild — a hunter gunning for Peacemaker’s pet eagle, Eagly — in Peacemaker season 2. Presumably, Gunn is confirming here that Savant in The Suicide Squad didn’t actually look like Michael Rooker in canon.

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In Peacemaker‘s first season, mercenary Clemson Murn hired contract killer Christopher Smith (John Cena) to his black ops squad as part of Project Butterfly. Tasked with assassinating high-profile human targets hosting the bug-like aliens called “butterflies,” Team Peacemaker — Emilia Harcourt (Jennifer Holland), Leota Adebayo (Danielle Brooks), and John Economos (Steve Agee) — learned that one such host was Murn, who was inhabited by the benevolent butterfly Ik Nobe Llok. But while attempting to stop queen butterfly Eek Stack Ik Ik’s attempted invasion of Earth, Ik Nobe Llok was crushed to death by Detective Sophie Song (Annie Chang) after she was leeched by Eek Stack Ik Ik.

Series regulars Cena, Brooks, Holland, Agee, and Freddie Stroma (Vigilante) and Robert Patrick (Auggie Smith) return for the new season, which has added new cast members Tim Meadows as A.R.G.U.S. Agent Langston Fleury, Sol Rodríguez as Checkmate’s Sasha Bordeaux, and Frank Grillo as Rick Flag Sr., reprising his role from Creature Commandos and Superman. Season 2 of Peacemaker premieres August 21 on HBO Max.