While there are hundreds of elements that go into making a movie great, it all starts with the script. The story comes before everything else, and that means that in order to give the movie the best chance of success, the script has to be perfect. But how long does it actually take to write a successful script? It turns out, it can take quite a lot of time. James Gunn has taken up to a year to write a movie.
James Gunn is getting underway with his latest movie, The Suicide Squad, right now, and in response to a fan who asked him how long it took him to write the movie, he reveals that this film only took him a few months to write, while the script for the movie he will make next, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, took him quite a bit longer...
This one was short! A few months. Guardians Vol 3 took a year. The Specials took a week and Super took maybe three weeks. It’s always different.
James Gunn has written a lot of superhero related movies in his life. Before he wrote the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie, he wrote a pair of comedies based around the idea. Both of those movies, The Specials and Super, he wrote in less than a month. While those movies might not be universally acclaimed, they both have some strong elements and are worthy of checking out if you haven't.
Today, it seems that writing scripts might be taking James Gunn longer in general. If The Suicide Squad took "a few months" rather than a few weeks, but he now considers that to be a short period of time, then all his scripts must be taking longer.
Still, the fact that he spent a year writing Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 seems like quite a bit of time. Gunn certainly doesn't explain on Instagram why the movie took so long. Whether there was a particularly complicated plot element, or he just wasn't happy with it until every detail was perfect. Perhaps the folks at Marvel kept adding notes that needed to be addressed. It could have been any number of reasons.
Of course, the fact that James Gunn spent a year making Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, makes the fact that we might have never seen the movie that much more upsetting. Gunn was fired from his role as the director of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 last year, and while most reports seemed to claim that Gunn's script would still be used, that was never confirmed, and even if it was, it's unlikely it would have been presented exactly as Gunn would have wanted had somebody else directed the movie.
I, for one, certainly want to see what a script that takes a year to write actually looks like. We'll get our answer, as we know the movie will now arrive, and be directed by James Gunn, although, the movie still has no official release date.
