James Gunn isn’t holding back. As the co-head of DC Studios and the man behind the upcoming Superman, he’s now at the very centre of Hollywood’s biggest battleground: saving the superhero genre from itself. In a new interview with Rolling Stone, the Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) director opened up about why the movie industry feels broken — and how his strategy at DC is trying to fix it. His diagnosis? Blockbusters are being made too fast and too carelessly.
“I do believe that the reason why the movie industry is dying is not because of people not wanting to see movies,” Gunn said. “It’s not because of home screens getting so good. The number-one reason is because people are making movies without a finished screenplay.”
It’s a pointed observation, but one that comes with experience. Gunn is in his third year as co-CEO of DC Studios, having crossed over from Marvel where he built one of its most beloved franchises. Now at DC, Gunn has is preparing to relaunch Superman with an all-new cast and style — one that’s already winning fans over.
But even with momentum on his side, Gunn is setting a hard rule: no script, no movie. In fact, he shared that DC recently scrapped a project despite it being greenlit.
“Everybody wanted to make the movie. It was greenlit, ready to go. The screenplay wasn’t ready. And I couldn’t do a movie where the screenplay’s not good,” he explained. “And we’ve been really lucky so far, because Supergirl’s script was so fucking good off the bat. And then Lanterns came in, and the script was so fucking good. Clayface, same thing. So fu*king good.”
For Gunn, that’s the new standard. And unlike the situation he left behind at Marvel, there’s no corporate pressure from Warner Bros. to churn out a set number of films or shows each year. “We don’t have the mandate [at DC] to have a certain amount of movies and TV shows every year,” he said. “So we’re going to put out everything that we think is of the highest quality.”
That’s a clear swipe at Disney. Gunn directly pointed to Marvel’s decline as the result of Disney+ pushing the studio to increase its output, something even Disney CEO Bob Iger has admitted was a misstep. “That wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. And it killed them,” Gunn said.
With Superman set to be the first major release under Gunn’s creative vision, all eyes are now on whether this slower, quality-first approach can revive a whole genre running on fumes. If it works, Gunn won’t just be saving the Man of Steel, he might just save the superhero movie.
