New DCU Co-Head James Gunn Talks About His Relationship With MCU Head Kevin Feige

Jesse Grant

James Gunn rose to prominence in 2014 when he directed 2014’s highly successful Marvel film Guardians of the Galaxy for Marvel and returned to direct its even more successful sequel Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 in 2017. After the massive success of the 2 movies James Gunn was all set to complete the trilogy when some troubling past tweets from the director surfaced and he was let go from Marvel. During that time he went ahead and directed DCEU’s Suicide Squad in 2021 which was also a critical hit and spawned the spin-off series Peacemaker starring John Cena.

Marvel corrected course and re-hired James Gunn to direct Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 which is due to be released in May of 2023 but the most recent and most exciting development in James Gunn’s life is that he was hired by DC as studio head alongside Peter Safran.

James Gunn now enjoys a unique position as an employee of Marvel working under Marvel Head Kevin Feige while also being the co-head of Marvel’s competition DC. Fans assumed that this would be a tricky position to be in but James has recently taken to Twitter to clarify that his relationship with Marvel head Kevin Feige remains stronger than ever and that Kevin was actually the first person he told when he found out that he was going to be DC studios head. The full content of his tweet was as follows;

“Not only do I love Kevin, he was the 1st person I told after I did the deal with DC (@JohnCena was the 2nd). Contrary to popular belief, a dollar less for Marvel is not a dollar more for DC. DC & Marvel have the common goal of keeping the theater-going experience vibrant & alive!”

While there is an inherent sense of competition between DC and Marvel comics at the end of the day both studios just want to provide a great cinema-going experience and the healthy competition between the two studios actually facilitates that process. Fans are excited to see how the DCU will be changing under new leadership.