For more than a decade now, the majority of James Gunn’s film and TV work has been superhero-oriented, from his time overseeing the Guardians of the Galaxy film series and accompanying holiday special in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, to first contributing to the DC Comics media landscape with The Suicide Squad, followed by Peacemaker Season 1. Now Gunn is running DC Studios with Peter Safran, which would be hard enough work on its own. But on top of that, Gunn wrote and directed Superman, and he’s now moved on to directing for another DC project. I’m right there with Frank Grillo, who plays the DC Universe’s Rick Flag Sr., in being amazed by the workload Gunn takes on for himself.
After originally being hired to voice Flag Sr. in the upcoming DC TV show Creature Commandos, which will be released to Max subscription holders in December, Grillo will make his live-action debut as the character as a member of the Superman cast. Principal photography on the upcoming DC movie concluded at the end of July, and now both Grillo and Gunn are working on Peacemaker Season 2. Here’s what the former said about the latter on his Instagram Stories:
I’m about to go start work on Peacemaker today, a couple scenes. And the great James Gunn… well, he’d written it, [now] he’s gonna direct. James just finished directing and writing Superman the movie, which he was all over the world for months and months until last week. Now he’s gonna direct this show with no real break. And in between that, he’s running, along with Peter Safran, DC Studios now with Warner Bros. So I’m sure there’s a lot of daily activity that he has to deal with there. I’m just curious, do some people have 48, 58 hours in the day?
It’s a logical assumption that James Gunn had to run DC Studios by himself, he wouldn’t have time to continue his writing and directorial activities. However, since he’s handling the company’s creative development on its various projects, while Peter Safran handles the production side of thing, that’s carved out time for Gunn to continue working on movies and TV shows personally. Still, it’s impressive that Gunn decided to squeeze working on Peacemaker Season 2, because you know that his DC Studios duties and post-production on Superman are both time intensive. If he’s managed to extend his day past 24 hours, could he please pass that secret along to the rest of us?
Frank Grillo’s video was accompanied by this caption he wrote, which fits James Gunn to a tee:
If you follow the habits of extremely successful people in any field, you’ll notice they ain’t 9-5 folks. Do what you love, you’ll love what you do.
Unlike with Peacemaker Season 1, James Gunn is not directing all of Season 2’s episodes, but rather just three, including the premiere. Greg Motolla helmed the second and third episodes, and Peter Collett handled the fourth. Although no specific plot details have been revealed for the new season yet, but when Frank Grillo’s involvement was announced, Gunn teased that he Rick Flag Sr. and John Cena’s title character, a.k.a. Christopher Smith, have “unfinished business.” That, of course, refers to Smith killing Flag’s son, Rick Flag Jr., in The Suicide Squad. It’s also now looking like Kinnaman will reprise his role in Peacemaker Season 2, though it’s unclear yet whether this will be through flashbacks or some kind of hallucinations.
The Peacemaker Season 2 cast also includes Sol Rodríguez and Tim. Meadows coming aboard as Sasha Bordeaux and A.R.G.U.S. agent Langston Fleury, respectively, as well as David Denman in an undisclosed role. Stay tuned to CinemaBlend for more updates on Season 2’s progress and the rest of the DC Universe movies and TV shows on the way.
