Gunn: Batman & Wonder Woman Are Priorities

As part of the next round of promotion for his “Superman” film, DC Studios chief James Gunn has sat down with Rolling Stone and covered a number of topics.

As previously reported, Warner Bros. Discovery chief David Zaslav has stated to investors that Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and Supergirl are the cornerstone characters of the new DC Universe.

“Superman” is ready for cinemas, a film which Gunn says features a Superman who doesn’t have planet-cracking level powers: “I didn’t want a Superman who could punch planets… He’s a little less powerful. We have a Superman that can be beat.”

Meanwhile “Supergirl” is already filmed and currently in post-production. Regarding it, Gunn confirms the film is just going by the shorter “Supergirl” title now, and he had little involvement with the project once the script was done.

What about the other two heroes? A new “Wonder Woman” hasn’t been announced yet, while two announced Batman films – one DCU (“The Brave and the Bold”) and one not (Matt Reeves’ “The Batman Part II”) – seem to have hit headwinds on their roads towards production.

Nonetheless, Gunn is working specifically on the “Batman: The Brave and the Bold” and “Wonder Woman” DCU films to get them into production at some point:

“Batman’s my biggest issue in all of DC right now, personally. And it’s not – I’m not writing Batman, but I am working with the writer of Batman and trying to get it right, because he’s incredibly important to DC, as is Wonder Woman. So outside of the stuff that I’m doing in the projects that are actively going, our two priorities are finishing our Wonder Woman and our Batman scripts.

Batman has to have a reason for existing, right? So Batman can’t just be “Oh, we’re making a Batman movie because Batman’s the biggest character in all of Warner Bros.,” which he is. But because there’s a need for him in the DCU and a need that he’s not exactly the same as Matt’s Batman.

Yet he’s not a campy Batman. I’m not interested in that. I’m not interested in a funny, campy Batman, really. So we’re dealing with that. I think I have a way in, by the way. I think I really know what it’s — I just am dealing with the writer to make sure that we can make it a reality.

Wonder Woman I think is actually easier for me, because there haven’t been so many infinite portrayals of Wonder Woman — definitely not in movies, but really anywhere — that there have been of Batman.”

As for Reeves’ film, Gunn has had it up to here regarding all the speculation about the project’s fate:

“It’s not canceled. We don’t have a script. Matt’s slow. Let him take his time. Let him do what he’s doing. God, people are mean. Let him do his thing, man..”

Gunn has been very public about not moving forward on a film unless the script is in great shape and finished, and says that stance led to the death of one such project already:

“We just killed a project. Everybody wanted to make the movie. It was greenlit, ready to go. The screenplay wasn’t ready. And I couldn’t do a movie where the screenplay’s not good.

We have to treat every project as if we’re lucky. We don’t have the mandate to have a certain amount of movies and TV shows every year. So we’re going to put out everything that we think is of the highest quality. “

“Superman” is set to open in cinemas on July 11th.

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