DCU Max Lord Sean Gunn, Also Brother Of ‘Superman’ Director James Gunn, Says There’s Less A Plan For DC And More Like “Bullet Points”
James Gunn’s brother Sean is along for the ride that is his sibling’s career. The latter has appeared in the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy, The Suicide Squad, and this year he made a cameo in Superman as Maxwell Lord, taking over for the ubiquitous Pedro Pascal.
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Good for him, he gets to be in big-studio superhero movies because of his blood relations. Getting to work with your closest kin is a dream for many people, but it has drawbacks, especially when your brother is prone to saying things to the media you are trying to retract.
Sean Gunn wasn’t shy about sticking with the official line that Superman is an immigrant story while James Gunn was trying to downplay it at the premiere. Now, Sean Gunn is being just as direct about the (possibly nonexistent) road map for the DCU.
“I don’t know that he always knows the long-term vision,” he explained TheWrap at Fan Expo Chicago. “He has bullet points for where things need to go and he keeps his eye on telling a great story, and never deviating from that part of it.”
Sean Gunn’s remarks are leading some of his brother’s harshest critics (and then some) to say James Gunn has no long-term plan, and doesn’t know where things are going. Still, Sean Gunn is enthusiastic and trusts the process.
“What I get most excited about is the idea of all of these things living in the same world, but having freedom to to be the unique vision of whatever storyteller is telling the story,” he said. “So, all these different stories live in the same world, but they have different creators and they can be different genres even.”
He went on, “You may have something that’s a little more horror-bent or a little more dramatic-bent, in addition to the action movies and the more superhero kind of fare, and I love that. I love the idea of even playing a character who you need to adjust what they’re doing because the genre is a little different.”
Gunn continued further, “It makes it similar to comics, in that comics have the freedom to have their own unique voice within the series that they’re in, but also those characters have a center that you don’t always want to deviate. So I’m really excited to see how it all looks after a few years.”
How the DCU looks now isn’t what most were expecting at the end of 2022. James Gunn delivered on churning out Superman, Creature Commandos, and a new season of Peacemaker on time. He is also keeping Supergirl on schedule, but most of his announced projects are in limbo.
Swamp Thing is postponed by James Mangold’s schedule, Sgt. Rock is in the orbit of cancelation, and both The Authority and The Brave and the Bold have hit a wall. Meanwhile, Clayface was rushed into production with Wonder Woman and new adventures for Superman potentially following suit.
If there is a plan, it’s as amorphous and moldable as the Batman villain just referenced.
