Now that Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is playing in theaters, James Gunn can officially leave the Marvel Cinematic Universe behind and focus all of his energies on DC Studios.
To say there’s a lot of pressure on his shoulders would be an understatement; after all, the franchise is already 10 years into its run and has suffered its fair share of ups and downs in that time, while there’s a huge number of fans out there who’ll never back the new co-CEO to the hilt for the sole reason that he isn’t Zack Snyder.
One person who has immense faith in Gunn also happens to be his boss, with Warner Bros. Discovery chief David Zaslav heaping even more praise and pressure on the filmmaker’s shoulders by outlining just how important the reinvigorated DC is going to be to the company’s short and long-term futures.
“We got James Gunn and Peter [Safran] working very hard on DC, which is going to be a very big growth driver for this company. We are very bullish on DC. The Superman script first draft is done. Gunn is on a mission from god. It is a really good moment to prove out on DC what we got and how strong it is globally for long-term sustainable growth.”
Them’s be fighting words, it would seem, even if it’s somewhere between hyperbolic and outright sacrilegious to claim the man upstairs has specifically tasked somebody who once made a woman explode in a shower of alien-infested goo inside a barn to single-handedly act as his vessel on earth to make sure we get a string of solid movies out of the DCU for a change.