We’ve heard director James Gunn’s side of the story of what happened after Disney fired him from Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and how he ended up directing The Suicide Squad for Warner Bros. and DC shortly after. Now, producer Peter Safran shares his side of the story of how he came to pitching Gunn on directing a DC film and how Marvel’s mistake was a huge benefit for DC and WB.
While a guest on a recent Hero Nation Podcast, Safran discussed when and how he approached the pitch to Gunn after Disney’s kneejerk reaction of firing him:
“Shazam and Aquaman, the sequels to the first successful films in each of the franchises, we’d been in development on those for a while. Suicide Squad was a much more opportunistic opportunity. It came along because, truly, the Monday after James Gunn was fired by Marvel — on the Friday or the Thursday before — I ran into [Warner Bros. Pictures Group Chairman] Toby Emmerich at the Warner Bros. gym. I ran into him there and he said, ‘Hey, tell James that we love him. We love James. Whatever he wants to do, we want to do it here — whether it’s DC or otherwise, we want to work with him.’
“And so I went to James, I talked about a couple different properties, but I really pitched him hard on The Suicide Squad because I thought that nobody puts together a disparate group of renegades and sends them on a mission better than James Gunn.”
We’ve also heard from Gunn that WB was also really trying to get him to direct a Superman film as well. Safran went on to talk about Disney’s decision to fire Gunn, saying:
“I think that people felt that it was an overreaction from Disney and Marvel, and I think ultimately Disney and Marvel felt it was an overreaction from Disney and Marvel. Because not that long after he signed on to do Suicide Squad — and by the way, the two are not related — but not long after he signed on to do it, they reversed their decision and they invited him to come back and finish his [Guardians] trilogy. So I think that people realize that he was maybe caught up in forces that were much bigger than he was and beyond his control, and the fact that he had both apologized for many years before those tweets and had also lived a pretty exemplary life since his apology for it.
“Listen, it was a terrible thing when it happened, but Marvel’s mistake turned out to be a giant benefit for DC and Warner Bros.”
Yeah, it did! I have a feeling that James Gunn and Warner Bros. are going to have a long working relationship with each other. After Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Gunn is done with Disney and Marvel. He’s already trying to figure out what his next project with WB will be. He enjoyed his experience with WB as they gave him complete freedom to make exactly the film he wanted. I’m sure that’s the kind of thing he’d like to keep in his career for as long as he can.