James Gunn was so inspired working on The Suicide Squad, his forthcoming big-screen take on the DCEU's most eclectic band of rogues, that he wrote an entire dang TV series centered on Peacemaker, John Cena's musclehead antihero, that will premiere on HBO Max in January 2022. How's that for a quick turnaround?
Gunn recently spoke with our own Steve Weintraub for The Suicide Squad and got into the nitty-gritty of the Peacemaker spinoff, including its editing status, episode runtimes, and what moved Gunn to say, "I love television storytelling."
Gunn revealed that the series will center around "one big storyline" while giving every other character of the ensemble cast their own journey to go on: "Every character has their own story. So there's the six main characters of Peacemaker, Leota Adebayo, who's Danielle Brooks, Emilia Harcourt, who's Jennifer Holland, Vigilante, who's Freddie Stroma, Clemson Murn, who is Chukwudi Iwuji, and John Economos, who is Steve Agee. It's really an ensemble about those six characters." And Gunn felt free to take his time and explore the nuances and unique turns of these characters afforded to him by the luxury of eight-episode television storytelling:
"You are able to let things relax. You are able to really, fully focus on the characters. Something can be funny. It can go on for a little while. You get into the nuances of the dramatic relationships that you don't have time for in a movie, and you don't have to have that constantly chugging along [pace] that you have in a movie... You can have a scene that doesn't have to do with anything in a TV show, because it's such a large format. We've got eight hours of storytelling, [so] we can have something go off, and it doesn't really need to go to point A and point B and point C like you do in a movie... So I loved the format of television. I had a blast, and I think it suited me very well."
However, unlike many of the prestige streaming dramas we see today, which vary wildly in episode length thanks to a lack of traditional commercial breaks, Gunn said that his Peacemaker episodes will be paced more traditionally: "They're more like 40-something minutes. They vary. Some are longer than others and some are shorter. But basically, I was kind of in the range of what is your actual, traditional hour-long, which is between 40 and 44 minutes." For network and basic cable television, commercials would eat up the rest of the time, making it technically an hour. Here, without these ad breaks, it seems like Peacemaker is gonna zip along at a refreshing clip.
When it comes to editing these eight episodes down to their network-ready lengths, Gunn revealed that the team is "pretty far along. The first three are pretty much completely edited. Four and five are coming along. They're a little slower, because they were directed by other people. Six, I just saw the first cut of last night, which I directed, I'm really happy with. And then eight is most of the way edited, and so is seven, which is [directed by] Brad Anderson." Gunn mentioning Anderson is particularly intriguing, given that Anderson's CV is full of slow-burn, prestige horror films like The Machinist and Session 9; the idea of that filmmaker unleashing himself on such wildly unhinged, comedic material alongside Gunn sounds like quite the fusion of tastes and impulses.
After this back-to-back slate of DCEU worldbuilding, what's next for Gunn? "I see myself doing more television for sure, mostly because of Peacemaker and then one other thing we're talking about, but I don't know what it's going to be," said Gunn, dropping a cryptic hint about another series in development. However, Gunn revealed that his particularly busy dance card came from an accidentally flawed methodology of choosing projects, and that he may wish to try another method in the near future: "I did something I don't love doing, which is stacking up projects. So I had Suicide Squad, Peacemaker, [the Guardians of the Galaxy] Christmas special, Guardians 3 for a long time. And I don't like doing that. I like doing something like I did with Suicide Squad, figuring out I want to do it and then going straight into it, figuring out Peacemaker, going straight into it. I don't like having things that I'm doing that I decided to do three years ago."
The Suicide Squad comes to theaters and HBO Max August 5, 2021. Peacemaker comes to HBO Max January 2022. Check out our interview video clip above, and be on the lookout for our full interview with Gunn soon.