Think about the best week of your life. You got the job you wanted, and you ate a good sandwich. You had your first child, and your favorite team won The Big Game. You beat the video game you’ve been playing for months, and you won $5 from a lottery ticket (this is my best week). All good weeks, but not as good as the week James Gunn had when he agreed to direct The Suicide Squad for DC, and heard from Marvel the next day about returning for Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3 after being fired months earlier.
“It was a happy ending, but it was also scary, because I actually got the call from [Walt Disney Studios chairman] Alan Horn long before it was announced: it happened literally the day after I agreed to do The Suicide Squad,” Gunn told Empire about coming back to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The filmmaker then had to make an uncomfortable call: telling Marvel Studios honcho Kevin Feige about directing The Suicide Squad for rival DC:
Gunn knew he had to update MCU head honcho Kevin Feige on his next project – who, when told it was a DC movie, asked: “Is it Superman?” Gunn stated that it wasn’t Superman (“That was a possibility,” he tells Empire) and explained that he had chosen The Suicide Squad. Feige’s reaction? “Please, please make a good movie. Just… make a great movie.”
It’s interesting that Gunn making a Superman movie was a “possibility” (with or without Henry Cavill?), but The Suicide Squad is a better fit for his Troma background-sensibilities. Maybe if the Man of Steel gets a talking shark sidekick, he’ll be interested.
(Via Empire)