From Troma to Superman and CEO: the unlikely evolution of James Gunn
Being publicly fired from a high-profile sequel by one of the largest multimedia corporations on the planet had the potential to be a career-ender, but if anything, it turned out to be the making of James Gunn, setting him directly onto the path that marked the latest unlikely chapter in a fascinating career.
A decade ago, the filmmaker had precisely one feature-length credit under his belt as a director, and he was arguably still best known for being the guy who co-wrote the live-action Scooby-Doo movies. Fast forward ten years, and he’s the co-CEO of a major studio sitting on a potential goldmine of film, television, animated, and video game content.
It’s been an unusual rise to the top, and while Marvel Studios was instrumental after handing him the keys to its Guardians of the Galaxy franchise, Gunn has always retained the sensibilities of his earliest days when he first got his foot in the industry door at famed schlock merchants Troma.
The prolific production house has knocked out over a thousand features, all of them made for miniscule budgets and focusing almost exclusively on gratuitous, gore-filled horror comedy. Gunn found an invaluable mentor very early on in company co-founder Lloyd Kaufman, who helped shape him into the director he wanted to be.
Gunn’s no-budget apprenticeship saw him co-write and serve as an associate director on 1995’s Tromeo and Juliet, but it was under Kaufman’s wing where he learned more about the writing process, how films are produced from beginning to end, location scouting, working with actors, distribution models, and marketing methods, all of which will come in very handy in his current position.
Satirical mockumentary LolliLove with a budget of $1,500, superhero comedy The Specials that earned a little over $13,000 at the box office, and straight-to-video supernatural slasher Terror Firmer continued Gunn’s inauspicious filmic upbringing in various capacities, and even when he made the jump to fly solo on Slither, it failed to recoup its production costs at the box office.
The exact same can be said of his sophomore effort Super. Still, nobody has benefitted more from Marvel’s habit of plucking relatively untested directors and unleashing them on comic book adaptations than Gunn. His Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy is among the studio’s most popular flicks, but he almost didn’t helm the third instalment after the resurfacing of historic tweets saw him removed from his position.
The cast threatened a rebellion if he wasn’t rehired, but he didn’t wallow in pity or self-misery for very long. Instead, he walked across town to rival DC, where he was offered the pick of any property he wanted. He plumped for R-rated soft reboot The Suicide Squad, but even though it failed to turn a profit after being crippled by the pandemic, it was the start of a blossoming creative partnership.
Gunn was brought back to Marvel for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, but in what could prove to be a delicious twist of irony for superhero cinema in general, he’s now heading up the competition. After steering spinoff series Peacemaker to streaming, he was awarded the company’s top job after being named co-CEO alongside friend and regular collaborator Peter Safran.
Less than 20 years after cutting his teeth on a splatter-fest inspired by the work of William Shakespeare, Gunn is directing a Superman reboot while juggling additional duties as the head of DC Studios. It’s an ascension that is rapid enough to give anyone a nosebleed, and it is not entirely incomparable to that of Marvel counterpart Kevin Feige.
After all, he was working as a personal assistant to producer Lauren Shuler Donner on Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan rom-com You’ve Got Mail in 1998, and now he’s the single most successful producer in cinema history as it applies to nothing but cold, hard, cash. Take a dash of Kaufman and a splash of Feige, and it makes perfect sense that Gunn has ended up in the position he currently finds himself in.
He’s got the anarchic spirit, rebellious streak, and single-minded determination of the former, and sitting under the learning tree of the latter has no doubt taught him plenty about steering an unwieldy spandex-clad ship. Did anyone watch the Scooby-Doo movie and think the guy who wrote it would be a major Hollywood power player two decades later? If they did, then they’re a modern-day Nostradamus.
