Warner Bros. Snatches James Gunn to Write, Possibly Direct Suicide Squad 2

Comic-book movie fans who were disappointed to see James Gunn leave the Marvel family earlier this year may want to turn their attention toward DC. Warner Bros. has confirmed that the Guardians of the Galaxy writer-director will be writing a Suicide Squad sequel—and potentially rescuing the DC franchise from a creative tailspin. It’s just another shot fired in the ongoing comic-book movie wars.

This isn’t the first time Warner Bros. poached talent from the Marvel Studios pool. After Avengers director Joss Whedon left the Disney-owned company under a cloud of conflict, Warner Bros. snapped him up to work on Zack Snyder’s embattled Justice League film. That partnership didn’t necessarily go as planned, and the resulting Justice League was patchy in tone—leaving critics baffled and Snyder loyalists furious. Whedon’s plans to continue working with the studio on a Batgirl project were scrapped soon after Justice League sputtered into theaters.

The Gunn-Suicide Squad situation, however, will be very different. Gunn will write the screenplay—and according to Deadline, the man Marvel let go over after a series of old, controversial tweets were surfaced by right-wing attack dog Mike Cernovich may also direct the film. In other words, the project could wind up being pure Gunn from start to finish.

Certainly, this can only be good news for the very lucrative but critically lambasted Suicide Squad—a franchise that had difficulty finding a coherent tone in its first installment. If Gunn has anything, it’s a strong voice. (And he’s certainly an improvement over Mel Gibson, who was rumored to be circling the project in 2017.) Suicide Squad could also stand to lighten up significantly; its talented cast, led by an intensely charismatic performance from Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, struggled under original director David Ayer’s vision of a dark, brutal, and twisted DC universe. In the comics, this particular gang of antiheroes works best when they’re having fun—even being zany. Sound like anyone you know?

It’s unclear what a Suicide Squad 2 script looks like now that Robbie’s Harley Quinn will be appearing in both the girl-gang offshoot Birds of Prey and a stand-alone, wacky rom-com with Jared Leto’s Joker. But even if Gunn’s treatment of Suicide Squad 2 never sees the light of day, this move sends a clear message from Warner Bros. to Disney. Marvel’s decision to fire Gunn was deeply unpopular both with the Guardians cast and with fans, who felt the move was tantamount to caving to a conservative-driven smear campaign. Gunn has long been unapologetically outspoken against the G.O.P. on his various social-media platforms—though he did apologize for his old, resurfaced tweets after Disney gave him the ax.