James Gunn: “I completely relate to Superman because he’s everything that I am”

For years, James Gunn was — and still is — one of the most important directors working at Marvel; he somehow took a group of second string superheroes most people had never heard of, the Guardians of the Galaxy, and turned them into a bankable big screen team. Marvel movies have been underperforming as of late, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 ends up becoming a hit when it drops into theaters next week.

But that seemed in jeopardy when Gunn was briefly fired from Marvel in 2018 over tasteless tweets from years earlier. Far from being the end of his career, it only led to new opportunities. Gunn was eventually rehired at Marvel and also made inroads at Warner Bros. which makes movies based on DC Comics. Now, he and Peter Safran are in charge of the new DC Universe, and Gunn is writing and directing a movie about the most famous superhero of them all: Superman.

“I completely relate to Superman because he’s everything I am,” Gunn told The Hollywood Reporter. “He’s somebody who is an outsider who feels like an alien, but also the ultimate insider, because he’s fucking Superman. And that’s kind of like what I feel like.”

Superman: Legacy will not be a goofy James Gunn-esque comedy

We still don’t know a ton about the new Superman movie, called Superman: Legacy, except that it will star a younger Clark Kent. Gunn tells THR that the movie won’t be a comedy; the writer-director has no plans to turn Superman into one of the quirky outsiders he’s famous for. He’s playing it sincere.

That said, as famous as Superman is, filmmakers have had trouble making movies about him that resonate. Superman Returns went over with a great “meh” in 2006, and while Man of Steel made a pretty penny in 2013, it had plenty of detractors, and Warner Bros. was largely unable to build on its success.

“It’s easier to take a character nobody knows, like the Guardians, or Peacemaker, and then do whatever you want with them,” Gunn said. “People in every single country in the world know the story of Superman.”

James Gunn: “[T]here have been just way too many superhero movies lately that don’t have that center to them”

In fact, Gunn was offered a Superman movie in 2018 but turned it down because he couldn’t find a way into the story. That’s changed now. “How can I make it different from the Superman movies that have been made so far, but also have it respect all the Superman movies that have been made so far?” he asked. “So it just took me some time to try to figure it out.”

We don’t know when Superman: Legacy is coming out, but it’s a big one, not just for the newly christened Warner Bros. Discovery studio but for superhero movies in general. If it doesn’t do well, maybe the naysayers are right and people really have succumbed to superhero fatigue, something Gunn is sympathetic to. “The entertainment industry has a history of people getting used to the spigot of one thing or another, whether it’s DVD sales or superhero movies,” he said. “I think that there have been just way too many superhero movies lately that don’t have that center to them.”

We’ll see if Gunn can revive that trend, first with Guardians 3 and then Superman: Legacy, whenever it arrives.

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