James Gunn is shutting down the assumption that “Superman” has to be a box office blockbuster. The writer/director, who is also the co-head of DC Studios alongside Peter Safran, told GQ that the franchise tentpole film does not carry as much pressure at the studio as critics believe.
“Is there something riding on it? Yeah, but it’s not as big as people make it out to be,” Gunn said. “They hear these numbers that the movie’s only going to be successful if it makes $700 million or something and it’s just complete and utter nonsense. It doesn’t need to be as big of a situation as people are saying.”
He added that rebooting “Superman” was “not the riskiest endeavor in the world.” David Corenswet stars as the title character superhero for the film that had a reported budget in the $200 million range, as Variety stated. “Superman” opens in theaters July 11 from Warner Bros. and DC Studios.
Gunn recently has been promoting “Superman” as a truly patriotic film, telling The Times that the storyline embodies “the story of America.”
“I mean, ‘Superman’ is the story of America,” Gunn said. “An immigrant that came from other places and populated the country, but for me it is mostly a story that says basic human kindness is a value and is something we have lost. It’s about human kindness and obviously there will be jerks out there who are just not kind and will take it as offensive just because it is about kindness. But screw them.”
He added, “Yes, it’s about politics. But on another level it’s about morality. Do you never kill no matter what — which is what Superman believes — or do you have some balance, as Lois believes? It’s really about their relationship and the way different opinions on basic moral beliefs can tear two people apart.”
Gunn further told Rolling Stone that unlike Disney’s MCU, WBD does not have a quota for DCU films. Therefore, “Superman” was only released when it was ready by Gunn’s standards.
“We don’t have the mandate [at DC] to have a certain amount of movies and TV shows every year. So we’re going to put out everything that we think is of the highest quality. We’re obviously going to do some good things and some not-so-good things, but hopefully on average everything will be as high-quality as possible,” Gunn said. “Nothing goes before there’s a screenplay that I personally am happy with.”
And out of all of the DCU characters, Superman isn’t the most important for this next phase of the IP. “Batman’s my biggest issue in all of DC right now, personally,” Gunn said. “I’m not writing ‘Batman,’ but I am working with the writer of ‘Batman’ [Matt Reeves] and trying to get it right, because he’s incredibly important to DC, as is Wonder Woman. So outside of the stuff that I’m doing in the projects that are actively going, our two priorities are finishing our ‘Wonder Woman’ and our ‘Batman’ scripts.”