James Gunn suggests a DC-Marvel movie crossover might happen someday
“I’m certain that’s more likely now that I’m in charge," Gunn said, while making it clear such a crossover would be a very long way off
Nobody, in all of the multi-billion-dollar superhero industry, straddles the gaps between the various camps like James Gunn. Originally coming up doing oddball indie cape movies, Gunn moved into a comfortable niche at Marvel with the Guardians Of The Galaxy films—and then, in between getting fired and then re-hired from those movies by Disney, began building up an empire at Warner Bros., ending in his takeover, with Peter Safran, of the entire DC Films apparatus late last year.
So, if anybody could maneuver the two companies into some kind of alliance, it’d be Gunn—and he’d “be lying” if he said he hadn’t thought about it. This is per an interview with Empire this week, ahead of the upcoming release of Gunn’s last regular Marvel project, Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3, in which Gunn admitted that he’s had conversations about some kind of crossover, while carefully noting that “all discussions have been very, very light and fun.”
Gunn clearly doesn’t want to put the cart before the horse, in terms of him and Safran getting DC Films put together—including, presumably, that new Superman movie Gunn has now put himself on the hook for. But he’s at least flirting with the idea of an inter-company crossover somewhere way down the line—even though, historically, those have… kind of sucked?
Look, we’re as seduced by the idea of Supes and Spidey teaming up and trading platitudes about responsibility as the next nerds. But the fact is, the various DC-Marvel crossovers that have happened in comics over the decades (and there have been quite a few of them) have mostly been weird, unsatisfactory things: Hampered by neither company wanting to “lose” any big fights between their heavy hitters, they tend to be pretty tepid affairs overall. (Even if the big one from the ’90s, the fascinatingly misguided Amalgam Universe, did produce some enjoyable goofy stuff, like “Dark Claw,” which is what you get when you merge Batman and Wolverine into a single, very angsty character.)
That being said, Gunn has accomplished a lot over the years by embracing the “kid playing with his action figures” ethos of superhero film-making, so maybe he’s the guy to have Thor and Aquaman finally duke it out over who’s copying who. If nothing else, he grants, “I’m certain that’s more likely now that I’m in charge.”