James Francis Gunn, Jr. (born August 5, 1966) is an American writer, director, and actor. He worked with Zack Snyder and Cruel and Unusual Films with the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead, writing the screenplay while Snyder directed. Since then, he has worked with Marvel Studios and DC Studios and become a big name in superhero filmmaking, but he still keeps contact with Snyder and maintains that the two are friends. Gunn brought Wayne Dalglish in for the stunt choreography of Peacemaker after Dalglish's repeat success in Snyder's movies.
Biography[]
James Gunn was born in St. Louis, Missouri, as one of six children in an Irish Catholic family. He spent much of his early life reading comic books and making zombie movies with his brothers, one of whom is actor Sean Gunn, who Gunn would later go on to work with in all of his films. He has admitted to having endured much abuse when he was young, which is likely what resulted in him writing several horrible parents as antagonists in his work as an adult. Gunn attended multiple schools before earning his Master's degree in Fine Arts from Columbia University.
Starting as a screenwriter primarily working for Troma Entertainment in the 1990s, Gunn gained some recognition for writing Scooby-Doo and Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed for Warner Bros, as well as Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead. However, his big break came when he wrote and directed Guardians of the Galaxy and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 for Marvel Studios, both of which were critical and commercial successes, and launched Gunn into the public eye.
After he was briefly fired by Marvel in 2018 when controversial tweets he made years ago resurfaced on the internet, he came to work for DC Studios, where he wrote, directed, and produced the DC Extended Universe film The Suicide Squad, mainly taking influence from John Ostrander's original Suicide Squad comics. He also created the spin-off Max series Peacemaker, and after his apology for the tweets and several of his friends in the industry vouching for him, Gunn came back to Marvel and was reinstated as writer and director of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. He also wrote and directed the additional Disney+ special The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, which he completed and released in 2022.
In late 2022, while still working on Guardians, Gunn took the role of co-chairman of DC Studios, managing the general creative direction for the DC brand in film, television and gaming, with Peter Safran managing the business side of the company. Utilizing The Flash and its time travel-focused plot, he set the DC Extended Universe to be reset into the DC Universe, a new world with some DCEU projects implemented into its timeline, including The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker. He will manage the DC Universe for the foreseeable future, with his first projects being the animated series Creature Commandos and the film Superman: Legacy.
Projects[]
Cruel & Unusual Films projects[]
Writer
Selection of other projects[]
External links[]
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