5 surprising things we learned from James Gunn's Rolling Stone interview

In a recent, in-depth interview with Rolling Stone, James Gunn opens up about his career, the future of the new DC Universe, and how he has changed. The co-CEO of DC Studios successfully turned the Marvel Cinematic Universe on its head with a quirky and hilarious take on what a superhero movie could be with Guardians of the Galaxy (and then managed to do it again with two more movies). And Gunn now has his sights set on doing the same for the DCU and its classic heroes like Superman, Supergirl, Wonder Woman, and the Justice League.

The 2023 Emmy award winner (which he won for I Am Groot) is aware of the high stakes at risk for the success of the new DCU, with the soon-to-be-released reboot of Superman.

Gunn was quite candid in his interview with Rolling Stone’s Brian Hiatt; however, I suspect that he is often forthright about this work and how his passion for filmmaking is fueled by, as he affirmed," a need to be loved.” His need to be loved isn't necessarily surprising, although here are five surprising takeaways from the Gunn interview with Rolling Stone.

1. Gunn constantly seeks things to eliminate

The upcoming Supergirl film was originally titled Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow after the comic book (by Tom King and Bilquis Evely) of the same name. However, it has since been retitled to just Supergirl. The same was true for the originally titled Superman: Legacy film that was renamed to just Superman.

Gunn admitted that his team does something called a premortem, where they get together as a group to work on a project a few months before shooting, and they say to themselves:

"If it's an epic disaster, what are the things that we're doing today that are going to cause it to be an epic disaster?"

It's these premortem meetings that led to Gunn's revolution, that he's "sick of the superhero title, colon, other-name thing." Gunn’s reflection that projects should look forward and not backward (as alluded to in these colon titles) led him to eliminate the subtitles for both the Supergirl and Superman projects.

2. His firing from Marvel was transformative for him

After James Gunn was fired from Marvel in 2018, it allowed him to do The Suicide Squad for Warner Bros. in 2021. He was later rehired by Marvel and finished Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.  3. In 2022, he had another opportunity to work with WB and DC on the HBO Max series Peacemaker,before he was eventually hired to be co-CEO and Chairman of the newly-formed DC Studios. His first project in that new role was the HBO Max animated series Creature Commandos.

Gunn admitted that without the firing experience, he certainly would not have been working for DC Studios, and he said… "I don't think that I would've written the Superman that I wrote." He came to this conclusion because he said before this experience, "a character that pure would've quite appealed to me."

Given Gunn's attraction to flawed or dark characters, one could see how the "Last Son of Krypton" who fights for truth and justice may not have originally appealed to a man whose first Hollywood-produced screenplays were Scooby-Doo (2002) and Dawn of the Dead (2004). Gunn was open enough in the interview to admit that experience helped him to "stop creating so that people would like me. That's downplaying it – so people would love me… Everything I had done come from a pleasing place."

3. He notes the shared retro-futuristic style in Superman and Fantastic Four

Both Superman and the upcoming The Fantastic Four: First Steps movies are released in July of 2025, and they both have similar retro-futuristic concepts in their respective films. Although similar, Gunn believes his sci-fi Silver Age take on Superman is "the biggest tonally novel thing about the film" which is based on the All-Star Superman comic book series from the 2000s.

Gunn recognizes the similar retro-futuristic aspects in both films, but he feels he's embracing more of the Silver Age aspects of the comics and believes that the films are dissimilar in style yet do have "certain similarities."

4. In Gunn's DCU world, metahumans have existed for 300 years

We’ve all seen the Superman trailer with Krypto dragging a wounded Superman through the snow to the Fortress of Solitude. It was this "man’s best friend" interaction between Kal-El and Krypto that Gunn admitted was his entrance into his storytelling for Superman.

It was this tone of the movie he wanted to make when he said "It's a flying dog who wears a cape, …to… robots, to the fortress… to the… giant magnifying glass, which powers him up more quickly than… the regular sun would." In this way, Gunn feels that all these elements together in one Superman movie hasn't been done this way before, as well as existing "in a world where superheroes… or metahumans, have existed for 300 years."

5. Gunn relates to Lex Luthor in a certain kind of way

Lex Luthor is a genius-level intellect with ruthless ambition, who simply can't get around the fact that Superman has arrived on Earth with gifts that put him ahead of those he believes has worked hard to get to where they are (like Lex himself). Gunn understands Lex in that he feels he relates "to Lex way more than I wish I did. But for me, Lex looks at Superman like an artist looks at AI."

In this way, Gunn is expressing that Lex believes that Superman's gifts were not earned, nor did he work hard for them, just as AI can create beautiful songs and works of art just from a suggestion without actually doing or earning the craftsmanship to do so.

Gunn says that Superman is "a guy who comes in who's done nothing to deserve the ability to fly and to smash down buildings. And he's also extraordinarily handsome, too."  All things that Lex believes Superman did nothing to earn, which drives his "obsession with being replaced, with being – with your gifts not being seen or passed over… I relate to everything he does. He's just meaner than I am."

James Gunn has a brilliant sense for what can and should touch audiences' hearts. I believe a consistent theme connects all great iconic filmmakers, and this is also true for Gunn. Superman has made a heck of an impression on our theatres already, and with a writer/director of Gunn's talent, humor, and sensibility, he has sure made us believe that a man can fly!