James Gunn
James Francis Gunn Jr. is an American filmmaker. He began his career as a screenwriter in the mid-1990s, starting at Troma Entertainment with Tromeo and Juliet. He then began working as a director, starting with the horror-comedy film Slither, and moving to the superhero genre with Super, Guardians of the Galaxy, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, The Suicide Squad, and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.
In 2022, Warner Bros. Discovery hired Gunn and his longtime producer Peter Safran to become co-chairmen and co-CEOs of DC Studios. Under DC Studios, Gunn co-produced and executive produced every film and television series under the DC Universe media franchise alongside Safran, which acts as a soft-reboot of the DC Extended Universe. In the DCU, he is the creator of the series Creature Commandos and the writer-director of the film Superman.
He also wrote and directed the web series James Gunn's PG Porn, the HBO Max original series Peacemaker and the Disney+ original special The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special. Other work for which he is known include writing for the 2004 remake of George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead, writing the live-action adaptation of Scooby Doo, and its sequel Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, writing and producing the horror-action film The Belko Experiment, producing the superhero-horror film Brightburn, and contributing to comedy-anthology film Movie 43 and the 2012 hack-and-slash video game Lollipop Chainsaw.
Early life
James Francis Gunn Jr. was born on August 5, 1966 in St. Louis, Missouri, to parents James F. Gunn, an attorney, and Leota "Lee". He was raised Catholic in the St. Louis suburb of Manchester, Missouri. He has five siblings — actor Sean, actor and political writer Matt, screenwriter Brian, Patrick, and Beth. Gunn is of Irish descent, his father coming from an Irish immigrant family. 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." He also has Jewish roots.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.
Gunn and his brothers all attended the Jesuit St. Louis University High School, where he graduated in 1984. He went on to earn a Bachelor of Arts from Saint Louis University. While at Saint Louis University, Gunn created political cartoons for the school's student weekly, The University News. 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." He earned a Master of Fine Arts from Columbia University in 1995.
Career
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. 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. 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. 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.
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 racoon crime fighting team and they fight crime in both the forest world, among the furry animals, and in the human world". 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.
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. 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."
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 ; the segment starred Elizabeth Banks and Josh Duhamel. The film was critically panned.
Gunn co-wrote and directed the Marvel Studios adaptation of Guardians of the Galaxy, which was released on August 1, 2014. 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, Gunn responded in a Facebook post, saying in part:
Gunn wrote and produced the horror film The Belko Experiment, which was released in 2017. In 2016, he directed three Stan Lee cameo scenes in one day, for the film Doctor Strange and two unrevealed projects.
Gunn wrote and directed Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. 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. Gunn was rehired in March 2019 after a mass public appeal, many saying he was the reason of the previous movies' successes.
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. In January 2019, he was officially confirmed to direct The Suicide Squad. He also wrote, directed, and produced the HBO Max spin-off show Peacemaker centered on The Suicide Squad character Peacemaker played by John Cena. 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.
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.
Firing from Disney and reinstatement
In July 2018, amidst criticism of Gunn's past controversial jokes posted on social media between 2008 and 2012—topics included child sexual abuse, rape, and the Holocaust—Disney severed its ties with him as the director of the upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 film.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."
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. Bobcat Goldthwait asked Disney to remove his voice from an upcoming park attraction based on their film Hercules.
A number of media outlets criticized Disney's decision, including Collider, Cartoon Brew, The Daily Dot, The Independent, National Review, MovieWeb, and Vulture. An online petition urging Disney to re-hire Gunn received over 400,000 signatures. 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.
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. 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.
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.