Even though nobody bats an eyelid when Frances McDormand shows up in a Coen brothers movie, Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach collaborate on their latest project, Melissa McCarthy and Ben Falcone re-team for yet another tedious comedy, or John Krasinski builds an entire Quiet Place universe around Emily Blunt, certain sections of the superhero fandom have serious issues whenever Jennifer Holland pops up in a James Gunn project.
Nepotism is the foundation of the very industry, but because the Guardians of the Galaxy director has built a reputation for casting his closest friends in virtually everything he does – a sentiment that’s already been confirmed to carry over from the Marvel Cinematic Universe to the DCU – it’s regularly used as a stick to beat him over the head with.
While the co-CEO did make a point of noting that he wasn’t responsible for Holland’s Emilia Harcourt showing up in either Black Adam or Shazam! Fury of the Gods, history has shown that he might be better off omitting her from Superman: Legacy entirely, and it’s got absolutely nothing to do with the fact they’re married.
The law of averages do not work in Holland’s favor when it comes to her DCU outings on the big screen, with The Suicide Squad cratering at the box office to lose Warner Bros. a fortune, before Black Adam subjected Dwayne Johnson to the biggest professional embarrassment of his career, prior to Fury of the Gods securing a status as one of the biggest bombs in the genre’s history.
In terms of commercial success and theatrical longevity, then, Holland is a big fat zero-for-three. The presence of Harcourt has quietly and completely accidentally become a curse upon any feature-length DCU offering, but unless Gunn is supremely superstitious, she’s virtually a lock for Superman: Legacy.
Then again, if The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker are canon, maybe there’s no room in the narrative for Amanda Waller and her underlings.
