The Suicide Squad Producer Says James Gunn’s Marvel Firing Was A Huge Benefit For DC

Marvel and DC both managed to get themselves the best of James Gunn after the filmmaker’s issues with the former sent him straight into the arms of the latter. After being given his marching orders from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 after a series of unsavory tweets from a decade ago resurfaced, Warner Bros. swooped in just days later with an offer.

Gunn was given the option of tackling any DC Comics property that he wanted, and he settled on The Suicide Squad, which made a great deal of sense given his sensibilities and propensity for crafting stories about a dysfunctional cast of morally murky characters. Not only is the soft reboot being called one of the best DCEU movies ever, but Marvel Cinematic Universe fans are still getting Guardians Vol. 3, which is kicking off production before the end of the year in order to hit a May 2023 release date.

In a new interview, The Suicide Squad producer Peter Safran stated the obvious when he admitted that Marvel’s temporary loss was DC’s immediate gain, and should the franchise’s band of antiheroes, killers and mercenaries ever be assembled again, you can guarantee Gunn’s name will be at the top of the list to take the helm.

“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 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.”

Fans were furious when Gunn was first booted out of the director’s chair for the final chapter in his Guardians trilogy, but it all worked out for everyone in the end. Audiences get two blockbuster superhero stories out of it, Marvel apologized and gave him his old job back, and DC got what’s going to be an incredible R-rated epic out of it, so at the end of the day nobody really loses.