One of the fun things about seeing a guy like James Gunn get elevated into being the head of his own superhero studio—specifically, DC Studios, which Gunn now co-runs with Peter Safran—is that he doesn’t stop being the same James Gunn who used to constantly run his mouth on social media. (Occasionally with franchise-impacting effects.) That tendency for mouth-running is very much in evidence in a new interview with Gunn that ran in Entertainment Weekly this week, as he gears up for the release of his new Superman movie. We can’t be one hundred percent sure, for instance, but we’re pretty sure this is the first time we’ve ever heard a studio head tell the collective internet to get off one of his creatives’ nuts.
The nutbearer in question being The Batman director Matt Reeves, who’s been working for some time on a script for a sequel to his out-of-continuity—Gunn calls them Elseworlds, nodding to an old-school DC Comics designator—blockbuster. “We’re supposed to get a script in June,” Gunn, who gave this interview a few weeks ago, confirms. “I hope that happens. We feel really good about it. Matt’s excited. I talk to Matt all the time. I’m totally excited about it. So we can’t wait to read the scripts, but we haven’t read it yet, if that’s your question. People should get off Matt’s nuts because it’s like, let the guy write the screenplay in the amount of time he needs to write it. That’s just the way it is. He doesn’t owe you something because you like his movie. I mean, you like his movie because of Matt. So let Matt do things the way he does.”
Reeves’ nuts suitably defended, Gunn also gave some insight into how he and Safran divide up their duties at DC Studios, which breaks down about how you’d expect. (Gunn handles the creative side of things, while Safran—who came up as a talent manager before moving into producing, where he made Warner Bros. enormous amounts of money with The Conjuring and Aquaman—takes the lead on more business-minded matters.) That’s in addition to fielding a lot of questions about what’s coming next, including Gunn talking around whatever his next directorial project will be. (He goes into no details, except to say that it was part of his initial pitch to Warner Bros. Discovery’s David Zaslav when he got the job, and he’s refused to announce it because “I felt like it was too easy to rip off by another company.”) There’s also lots of the standard checking in on projects: The Sgt. Rock movie Luca Guadagnino recently dipped out on is still in the works (“Right now it wasn’t exactly where I wanted it to be creatively”); Amazon-focused Paradise Lost is “slow-moving” but “moving along.” (And is only loosely connected to whatever DC’s doing next with Wonder Woman.) Supergirl has already been filmed, Peacemaker season 2 has just wrapped filming, and Clayface is coming up on the schedule, having been basically wished into existence by Mike Flanagan. And, of course, The Batman Part II is coming someday… just as soon as we all take our collective leave of Matt Reeves’ beleaguered nuts.
