James Gunn is rejecting the content-first mentality that hurt the MCU
The director of the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy and the co-CEO of DC Studios has critiqued the modern film industry and, specifically, Marvel's recent struggles.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Gunn expressed his opinion that the industry is suffering not because audiences have lost interest in movies but because studios are greenlighting movie projects before the screenplays are finished.
"I do believe that the reason why the movie industry is dying is not because of people not wanting to see movies. It's not because of home screens getting so good," Gunn said. "The number-one reason is because people are making movies without a finished screenplay."
Reflecting on his time at Marvel and the current state of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), the Superman director pointed to Disney's push to produce more content as a key reason for the decline, expressing his opinion about the corporate mandate: "That wasn't fair. It wasn't right. And it killed them."
Now in his third year as co-CEO of DC Studios alongside Peter Safran, Gunn is applying the lessons learned from Marvel's overreach.
The goal is to focus on quality over quantity: "We have to treat every project as if we're lucky," Gunn emphasized. "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."
After The Rolling Stone interview was published, the director of Guardians of the Galaxy explained 'it killed them' comment interacting with his fans on Threads.
"To be clear - & as IS clear in the context of the interview- I didn't say "it killed them" like they're over but they were screwed by the situation they had no control over. They're on the other side of that now, which is good. The sacrifice-everything-for-streaming craze killed many good things by forcing a demand for "content" that couldn't possibly be met, putting movies on TV before they had a proper theatrical run & much more. The insanity has died down & balanced out everywhere. Thank God."
With Superman set to release in July and several other projects underway, Gunn remains fully immersed in shaping DC's new cinematic universe.
After criticism of Marvel and Disney, he later clarified that he didn't mean to suggest Marvel was finished. Instead, he pointed out that the studio went through a tough period, driven by unrealistic corporate expectations.