John Cena Getting His Own Suicide Squad Spinoff On HBO Max

Another DC TV series is coming to HBO Max and this time, it’s a direct spinoff of The Suicide Squad featuring John Cena reprising his role as Peacemaker from the upcoming sequel. In addition to Cena in the lead, filmmaker James Gunn will return to write all eight episodes of the straight-to-order show, as well as direct a number of them.

The exciting news was broken by Deadline this afternoon. Titled Peacemaker, the series will be a prequel that explores how Cena’s Christopher Smith became a gun-toting vigilante, a man who’s dedicated to peace at all costs, no matter how many people he has to kill in the pursuit of it. Gunn and TSS producer Peter Safran will serve as executive producers, with Cena himself as co-executive producer.

Peacemaker will be the second of HBO Max’s upcoming DC shows to be an offshoot of the movie universe. As we learned back in July, the first will be a spinoff of The Batman, following the Gotham City Police Department. It’s clear that Warner Bros. is looking to continue this trend, then, with many more TV tie-ins no doubt in the works that we don’t know about yet.

In a press statement that came with the announcement, James Gunn said:

“Peacemaker is an opportunity to delve into current world issues through the lens of this superhero/supervillain/and world’s biggest douchebag. I’m excited to expand The Suicide Squad and bring this character from the DC film universe to the full breadth of a series. And of course, to be able to work again with John, Peter, and my friends at Warner Bros. is the icing on the cake.”

John Cena, meanwhile, had this to say:

“I have said before that it has been a tremendous honor and an incredible opportunity to be part of The Suicide Squad and to work with James on what is going to be a fantastic movie. I am unbelievably excited to have the chance to team up with him again for Peacemaker. We can’t wait for fans to see this.”

Cena will debut as Peacemaker in The Suicide Squad, which is scheduled to hit theaters in August 2021. His spinoff show, meanwhile, is on course to start production early next year. Deadline also confirms that this is Gunn’s next project and he’ll work on it before he finally returns to Marvel to shoot Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.