James Gunn, the co-CEO of DC Studios and director of the upcoming Superman movie, has reflected on the current state of the movie industry in a new interview. Gunn has been active in the entertainment industry since the late 80s. He has worked closely with or as leadership at some of the biggest movie studios, including Disney and Warner Bros., which has given him an insider’s perspective on the current health of the industry.
James Gunn talks about how movie industry is dying
Gunn recently gave an expansive interview to Rolling Stone that covered a wide array of topics. When asked about Eddie Murphy’s statement criticising Hollywood’s tendency to announce a release date before even the script is ready, Gunn began, “Yeah, totally. Listen, you can do everything right and make a bad movie. I’m really compassionate towards people that put their all into a movie.”
The filmmaker then mentioned that he had former colleagues at Marvel who made underwhelming movies. He continued, “There were people that were lazy and didn’t put their time in. And then there were other directors that worked really hard and maybe didn’t have the best movie come out, but they did everything they could.”
Gunn mentioned that he didn’t believe that the movie industry was dying due to “people not wanting to see movies” or because home screens have gotten “so good.” Instead, according to Gunn, it was because “people are making movies without a finished screenplay.”
Gunn revealed that he killed a DCU movie that “everybody wanted to make” because he felt “the screenplay wasn’t ready.” He elaborated, “And I couldn’t do a movie where the screenplay’s not good.” He noted that projects such as Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, Lanterns, and Clayface all had good scripts.
During the interview, Gunn also discussed his current workload and whether he was concerned about experiencing burnout. “If I do, then I’ll go raise goats,” he quipped, before adding that he was fine and it hadn’t happened yet.
