The Suicide Squad Spinoff Peacemaker Begins Filming With James Gunn

Even though we’re still waiting for the premiere of The Suicide Squad, filmmaker James Gunn has already been hard at work for his DC Comics followup coming to HBO Max with the John Cena-starring series Peacemaker. Cena will reprise his superhero role in the upcoming film in the title role, and it looks like filming is now underway on the HBO Max series according to Gunn himself. In a new post on social media, Gunn reflected on his time during the coronavirus pandemic and writing the series “for fun” while quarantining, and now it’s becoming a reality.

Check out Gunn’s post below:

“5 months ago, while quarantining, I was almost done editing The Suicide Squad & had just turned in a draft of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 & was awaiting notes,” said Gunn. “Normally I would try & take a break during this time & go on vacation. But with Covid that wasn’t happening. So, having nothing else to do, I started writing a TV series, mostly for fun, as I didn’t believe it was ever going to happen. I wrote a whole first season in 8 weeks. And now, here I am in my trailer, on the first day of shooting. Life is surreal. Let’s go (& go safely!)”

Gunn followed up that post with another one on Twitter, hinting that this might only be the beginning of Peacemaker as a series and not just a one-off project.

Cena previously praised his collaboration with Gunn, expressing excitement to rejoin the director on anything he had in mind.

“This is also, you try to do the best you can with every opportunity,” Cena said on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon. “I really loved The Suicide Squad and got along great with James [Gunn], and was like ‘Hey man, we should do this again!’ He was like ‘Yeah, we should do this again!’ Pretty soon, he was like, ‘Yo, do you want to do a show for HBO Max?’ I was like, what?!”

Peacemaker does not yet have a release date on HBO Max, but it should premiere on the streaming service in 2022 after The Suicide Squad hits theaters on August 6th, 2021.