Top Qs
Timeline
Chat
Perspective
James Gunn
American filmmaker (born 1966) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Remove ads
James Francis Gunn Jr. (born August 5, 1966)[n 1] is an American filmmaker. He began his career as a screenwriter in the mid-1990s, starting at Troma Entertainment with Tromeo and Juliet (1996). He then began working as a director, starting with the horror-comedy film Slither (2006), and moving to the superhero genre with Super (2010), Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017), The Suicide Squad (2021), and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023).
In 2022, Warner Bros. Discovery hired Gunn and his longtime producer Peter Safran to become co-chairmen and co-CEOs of DC Studios.[1] Under DC Studios, Gunn co-produced and executive produced every film and television series under the DC Universe (DCU) media franchise alongside Safran, which acts as a soft-reboot of the DC Extended Universe (DCEU). In the DCU, he is the creator of the series Creature Commandos (2024) and the writer-director of the film Superman (2025).
He also wrote and directed the web series James Gunn's PG Porn (2008–2009), the HBO Max original series Peacemaker (2022–present) and the Disney+ original special The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special (2022). Other work for which he is known include writing for the 2004 remake of George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1978), writing the live-action adaptation of Scooby Doo (2002), and its sequel Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (2004), writing and producing the horror-action film The Belko Experiment (2016), producing the superhero-horror film Brightburn (2019), and contributing to comedy-anthology film Movie 43 (2013) (directing the segment "Beezel") and the 2012 hack-and-slash video game Lollipop Chainsaw.
Remove ads
Early life
Summarize
Perspective
James Francis Gunn Jr.[2] was born on August 5, 1966[3][n 1] in St. Louis, Missouri,[4] to parents James F. Gunn, an attorney, and Leota "Lee" (Hynek).[8][9][10] He was raised Catholic[11] in the St. Louis suburb of Manchester, Missouri.[12][13] He has five siblings — actor Sean, actor and political writer Matt, screenwriter Brian, Patrick, and Beth.[14][15][16] Gunn is of Irish descent,[17] his father coming from an Irish immigrant family.[18] Gunn has stated that his family's surname was originally the Irish name MacGilgunn and that it means "sons to the servants of the god of the dead"; it actually means "son of the brown youth."[19][20][21] He also has Jewish roots.[22]
Growing up, Gunn was influenced by low-budget films such as Night of the Living Dead and Friday the 13th. He read magazines like Fangoria and attended genre movie screenings, including the original Dawn of the Dead at the Tivoli Theatre in St. Louis. At the age of 12, he began making 8 mm zombie films with his brothers in the woods near their home.[23]
Gunn and his brothers all attended the Jesuit St. Louis University High School, where he graduated in 1984.[7][8] He went on to earn a Bachelor of Arts from Saint Louis University.[24] While at Saint Louis University, Gunn created political cartoons for the school's student weekly, The University News.[25] Gunn said that, at an unspecified time in his college education, "I went to two years undergraduate film school at Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles. But I was pretty screwed up at the time, and had to leave. Years later I went to graduate school at the Columbia University School of Fine Arts but I studied prose writing, not film writing."[26] He earned a Master of Fine Arts from Columbia University in 1995.[27]
Remove ads
Career
Summarize
Perspective
Music
While living in St. Louis, Gunn founded a band, The Icons, in 1989, serving as lead vocalist. The group released the album Mom, We Like It Here on Earth in 1994, and its songs "Sunday" and "Walking Naked" were featured in the film Tromeo and Juliet. The Icons disbanded in the mid-1990s.[28] Gunn has continued to work in music, composing songs for Scooby-Doo, Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, and Movie 43.
Film and television
Gunn began his career in filmmaking with Troma Entertainment in 1996, for which he co-wrote the independent film Tromeo and Juliet. Working alongside his mentor Lloyd Kaufman, the co-founder of Troma, Gunn learned how to write screenplays, produce films, scout locations, direct actors, distribute films, and create his own poster art.[23] After contributing to several other Troma films, Gunn in 2000 wrote, produced and performed in the superhero comedy The Specials, directed by Craig Mazin and featuring Rob Lowe, Thomas Haden Church, Paget Brewster, Judy Greer and Jamie Kennedy.
Gunn's first major Hollywood screenplay was Scooby-Doo in 2002. In 2004, he wrote the screenplays for the remake of Dawn of the Dead and the sequel Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed. With these films, Gunn became the first screenwriter to have two films top the box office in consecutive weeks.[29] That same year, he executive produced and starred in the mockumentary LolliLove, directed by and starring his then-wife Jenna Fischer. His film directorial debut was the 2006 horror-comedy Slither, which was included on Rotten Tomatoes' list of the 50 Best Ever Reviewed Horror Movies.[30]
Gunn's next projects included the comedy short film "Humanzee!" which was originally intended exclusively for the Xbox Live's Horror Meets Comedy series of short comedy films by horror directors, it was replaced with "Sparky and Mikaela" which debuted on Xbox Live on December 31, 2008. In an April 2009 interview on The Jace Hall Show, Gunn described "Sparky and Mikaela" as being "about a human [and] racoon crime fighting team and they fight crime in both the forest world, among the furry animals, and in the human world".[31] Gunn also has a short-form web series for Spike.com titled James Gunn's PG Porn.
In 2008, Gunn was a judge on the VH1 reality television show Scream Queens, where 10 unknown actresses compete for a role in the film Saw VI.[32]
In 2009, Gunn announced he was going to write and direct Pets, a comedy about a man who is abducted by aliens who want to turn him into a household pet, with Ben Stiller, Stuart Cornfeld and Jeremy Kramer producing.[33] However, by March 2009, Gunn announced, "Pets unfortunately, is done. I'm gone. I left the project for various reasons. I hope it sees the light of day somehow, but it won't be with me attached as director."[34]
In 2010, Gunn released Super, a dark comedy and superhero satire starring Rainn Wilson and Elliot Page. He also directed a segment of the 2013 comedy anthology film Movie 43 (2013); the segment starred Elizabeth Banks and Josh Duhamel. The film was critically panned.
.jpg)
Gunn co-wrote and directed the Marvel Studios adaptation of Guardians of the Galaxy, which was released on August 1, 2014.[35] His brother, Sean, has a role in the film. Gunn has appeared as an actor, mostly in smaller roles or uncredited appearances in his own projects. After Dan Gilroy and Jack Black separately lamented the proliferation of superhero films,[36] Gunn responded in a Facebook post, saying in part:
Popular fare in any medium has always been snubbed by the self-appointed elite. ... What bothers me slightly is that many people assume because you make big films that you put less love, care, and thought into them than people do who make independent films or who make what are considered more serious Hollywood films. ... If you think people who make superhero movies are dumb, come out and say we're dumb. But if you, as an independent filmmaker or a 'serious' filmmaker, think you put more love into your characters than the Russo Brothers do Captain America, or Joss Whedon does the Hulk, or I do a talking raccoon, you are simply mistaken.[37]
Gunn wrote and produced the horror film The Belko Experiment, which was released in 2017.[38] In 2016, he directed three Stan Lee cameo scenes in one day, for the film Doctor Strange and two unrevealed projects.[39][40][41]
Gunn wrote and directed Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017).[42][43][44] Gunn was slated to direct Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 in July 2018, but before the project started, Disney severed ties with Gunn as the director amid controversy over off-color jokes he had tweeted.[45] Gunn was rehired in March 2019 after a mass public appeal, many saying he was the reason of the previous movies' successes.[46]
In October 2018, Gunn was hired to write a completely new script for the DC Extended Universe film The Suicide Squad, with the intention of also serving as director, after its original director Gavin O'Connor left due to scheduling issues.[47][48] In January 2019, he was officially confirmed to direct The Suicide Squad.[49] He also wrote, directed, and produced the HBO Max spin-off show Peacemaker[n 2] centered on The Suicide Squad character Peacemaker played by John Cena.[50] Gunn also co-wrote and co-produced a live-action/animated film titled Coyote vs. Acme, based on the Looney Tunes character Wile E. Coyote, for Warner Bros. Pictures Animation.[51]
Other media
Gunn wrote a novel in 2000, The Toy Collector, a story of a hospital orderly who steals drugs from the hospital which he sells to help keep his toy collection habit alive. In 1998, he and Troma's President Lloyd Kaufman co-wrote All I Need to Know About Filmmaking I Learned from The Toxic Avenger, about his experiences with Kaufman while working at Troma.
He wrote the story for Grasshopper Manufacture's video game Lollipop Chainsaw, working with game designer Suda 51.[52]
Firing from Disney and reinstatement
_(cropped).jpg)
In July 2018, in reaction to Gunn's public criticism of President Donald Trump, right-wing commentator Mike Cernovich drew attention to controversial jokes that Gunn had posted on social media between 2008 and 2012 involving topics such as child sexual abuse, rape, and the Holocaust.[53][54] Amid criticism of the tweets, Disney severed ties with Gunn as the director of the upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 film.[55]
Gunn responded, describing the jokes as "stupid, not at all funny, wildly insensitive, and certainly not provocative like I had hoped". He continued apologetically, "Even these many years later, I take full responsibility for the way I conducted myself then. All I can do now, beyond offering my sincere and heartfelt regret, is to be the best human being I can be: accepting, understanding, committed to equality, and far more thoughtful about my public statements and my obligations to our public discourse."[55][56]
Walt Disney Studios's decision received criticism from many entertainers and journalists, including actors Dave Bautista, Selma Blair, Patton Oswalt, David Dastmalchian, Michael Ian Black, Mikaela Hoover, Mike Colter, Alex Winter, David Hasselhoff, directors Joe Carnahan and Fede Álvarez, comics artist Jim Starlin, musician Rhett Miller, comedian Jim Jefferies, journalist David A. French, and Troma Entertainment founder Lloyd Kaufman.[a] Bobcat Goldthwait asked Disney to remove his voice from an upcoming park attraction based on their film Hercules.[66]
A number of media outlets criticized Disney's decision, including Collider, Cartoon Brew, The Daily Dot, The Independent, National Review, MovieWeb, and Vulture.[67][58][68][69][70][71][72] An online petition urging Disney to re-hire Gunn received over 400,000 signatures.[57][73][74][75] On July 30, Guardians of the Galaxy cast members Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldaña, Dave Bautista, Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel, Sean Gunn, Karen Gillan, Pom Klementieff, and Michael Rooker released a joint statement expressing their support for Gunn, emphasizing that he had disavowed and apologized for the jokes years previously.[76]
Because of the situation, Sony Pictures did not promote the horror film Brightburn, which Gunn had produced, at the 2018 San Diego Comic-Con, which took place in the days after Gunn's dismissal.[77] However, when the first trailer for the film was released on December 8, Gunn's name was prominently featured, and the film opened in May 2019.[78]
In March 2019, Gunn was reinstated by Disney as director of the film after meeting with Alan Horn, chairman of Walt Disney Studios. Gunn started production on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 in October 2021, after The Suicide Squad had been completed.[46]
DC Studios
_(1).jpg)
Gunn and frequent producing partner Peter Safran had advised David Zaslav, the CEO of the newly created Warner Bros. Discovery, during his search for a new head of DC Films. The duo impressed Zaslav, who decided to appoint them as the co-chairpersons and CEOs of DC Films, rebranded as "DC Studios". The two were given control over films, animation and television projects based on characters from DC Comics. Gunn was to oversee the creative aspects and will be exclusive to Warner Bros. Discovery during his tenure, except for his prior commitments to Disney. The two first worked together on the 2000 superhero comedy film The Specials written by Gunn with Safran as co-executive producer, with subsequent collaborations including Gunn's 2008 short films Sparky & Mikaela and Humanzee!, the television series James Gunn's PG Porn (2008–2009), The Belko Experiment (2016) and the DCEU film The Suicide Squad (2021). The two assumed their positions on November 1, 2022.[79][80][81][82]
In December 2022, Gunn announced that he was writing a film about a young Superman during his early years in Metropolis,[83] later revealed to be titled Superman and released in July 2025; in March 2023 it was confirmed Gunn would also direct the project.[84] In January 2023, Gunn and Safran revealed their plans for future DCU films, with the first chapter being titled "Gods and Monsters". Gunn also wrote a seven-episode animated series titled Creature Commandos, based on the comic book team of the same name,[85] and released ahead of Superman in December 2024,[86] and also worked on the HBO Max series Waller, a spin-off of Peacemaker focusing on the character of Amanda Waller, with Christal Henry writing and Viola Davis reprising her role from previous DCEU projects.[87][88] Gunn is also involved in multiple other DC projects, including producing Supergirl due for release in 2026.[89][90]
Following the success of Superman, Gunn announced a follow-up film in September 2025, titled Man of Tomorrow, using new artwork from Jim Lee. The film is set to be released in 2027, with David Corenswet and Nicholas Hoult expected to reprise their roles.[91] The second season of Peacemaker was also produced by the Gunn and Safran-led DC Studios. Most of the first season is canon to the DCU, but only the second season, written in 2023 and scheduled to air in August–October 2025, is part of the Gods and Monsters chapter.[86][92][93]
Remove ads
Personal life
Gunn married actress Jenna Fischer on October 7, 2000.[8] After seven years of marriage, Gunn and Fischer announced their separation in a joint statement on September 5, 2007,[94] divorcing in 2008.[95] The two remained friends. In 2010, Fischer persuaded Gunn to cast Rainn Wilson, her co-star on The Office, in Gunn's film Super.[23]
Gunn has been in a relationship with actress Jennifer Holland since 2015.[96] In February 2022, Holland and Gunn became engaged,[97] and were married at the end of September 2022.[98]
He has a dog named Ozu, adopted from a shelter in 2022. Gunn has regularly shared photos of the dog and promoted the hashtag #AdoptDontShop.[99] For that reason as well as his CGI work on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, PETA declared Gunn to be their 2023 Person of the Year.[100] Ozu served as the inspiration for the redesigned, CGI-animated Krypto the Superdog in Gunn's 2025 adaptation of Superman.[101]
Gunn was raised in a Catholic family and has mentioned how prayer continues to play an important role in his life,[102] but has also said that he is, "in some ways, anti-religion".[103]
Filmography
Summarize
Perspective
Film
Executive producer
Other roles
Short films
Acting roles
Television
Acting roles
Video games
Theme parks
Remove ads
Frequent collaborators
Summarize
Perspective
Gunn is known for his recurring collaborations with certain actors.[115][116][117][118]
Remove ads
Unrealized projects
1990s
- Gilligan's Island: In the late 1990s, Gunn and Charlie Kaufman attempted to make a film adaptation of the 1960s television series Gilligan's Island, but as a cannibal film. Although the project was supported by Warner Bros., the film was never made because Sherwood Schwartz, who created the show, disapproved.[119][120][121]
- Silver Surfer: In 1999, an executive from 20th Century Fox offered to hire Gunn to write and direct a film about the Marvel Comics superhero Silver Surfer.[122]
- Spy vs. Spy: Also in 1999, Gunn wrote an unproduced screenplay adaptation of Spy vs. Spy. According to Gunn, Jay Roach was to have directed and Nicolas Cage and Eddie Murphy were to have starred.[123][124]
2000s
- Plastic Man: While much is not known about this project or how far it got, Gunn pitched a basic idea back in the early 2000s where Matthew Lillard would have starred as the titular, wise cracking hero.[125]
- The Newlyweds: In a 2002 interview with IGN, Gunn revealed that one of his next projects was a script called The Newlyweds for Warner Bros.,[126] which ultimately was not produced.
- Pure stage musical: Gunn also revealed that he and Tromeo and Juliet composer Willie Wisely were working on a stage musical called Pure. Gunn described said project as "a love story revolving around a guy who kills and tortures people because he thinks it helps him write and draw better children's books."[126]
- Scooby-Doo 3: Gunn was to have helmed Scooby-Doo 3, which would have been the third film of Scooby-Doo (2002). However, due to the critical and financial failure of Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (2004), Warner Bros. cancelled the project.[127]
- Creature from the Black Lagoon remake: In 2004, Gunn pitched to Universal Pictures his screenplay that was intended to be a remake of the 1954 film Creature from the Black Lagoon, but the studio turned down the pitch.[127]
- Untitled Satan film: While promoting his film Slither (2006), Gunn revealed to IGN that he was in the process of writing a "much darker" movie about Satan. "I feel good about it," he said of the project at the time. "I think it's something special. [Slither] is really a call back to the '80s films and I think what I'm doing now, it's kind of its own thing."[128]
- Pets: In 2007, it was reported that Gunn was to write and direct a comedy film for New Regency titled Pets, with Ben Stiller serving as one of the producers.[122][129] Gunn left the project due to creative differences.[122][130]
- The Belko Experiment:
2010s
- Thunderbolts:
- It's Alive remake: Larry Cohen said in a 2017 interview that Gunn had approached him for permission to make a remake of his 1974 film It's Alive. According to Cohen, Gunn "couldn't raise enough money to buy the rights. I'm sorry today I didn't give them to him."[131]
- Starsky & Hutch TV continuation: On August 31, 2017, Gunn was set to direct and co-write a dramatic continuation of Starsky & Hutch with his brother Brian & cousin Mark Gunn as co-writers for Prime Video.[132] On July 24, 2018, an Amazon Studios spokesperson revealed on Yahoo! Finance that the series was cancelled months before Gunn was fired from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.[133]
- Ravagers TV spinoff: In August 2017, Gunn said that he was in talks with Marvel Studios to make a Ravagers spinoff series.[134][135]
- Untitled Drax and Mantis spinoff film: In September 2017, Gunn said he would continue to work with Marvel Studios on projects that use the Guardians of the Galaxy.[136] In 2021, actor Dave Bautista revealed that a film that Gunn "really wanted to do [was] a Drax and Mantis film". However, no follow-up was heard from the studio, so the idea was likely scrapped.[137] These characters did get to later be featured in The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special.
- Untitled Batman film: During pre-production of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Warner Bros. approached Gunn to make a Batman film for the DC Extended Universe (DCEU). However, Gunn turned down the chance due to his focus on the third Guardians of the Galaxy film. After he was briefly fired from the project in 2018, Warner would offer him a Superman film (which according to him, if they had come up to him then with directing Batman, he would have said affirmatively), but Gunn ended up choosing to do a Suicide Squad film, which ended up becoming The Suicide Squad. Once president of DC Studios and one of the architects of the DC Universe (DCU), Gunn will produce the Batman film The Brave and the Bold.[138]
2020s
- The Suicide Squad sequel: In 2021, Gunn stated that he had ideas for a potential sequel to his film The Suicide Squad.[139] In 2022, Gunn said there had been discussions about a sequel and he was considering it for his next feature film but his focus was on television for the foreseeable future following his positive experience making Peacemaker.[140] The following June, Gunn said there would not be a sequel.[141]
- The Authority: TheWrap reported that Gunn was originally set to direct the DCU film The Authority, a superhero film based on the WildStorm comics featuring the eponymous team.[142]
Remove ads
Awards and nominations
Remove ads
Bibliography
See also
Notes
Remove ads
References
External links
Wikiwand - on
Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.
Remove ads