James Gunn says his Superman was influenced by his controversial Marvel firing: "I don't think that I would've written the Superman that I wrote"

James Gunn has already revealed many inspirations for his upcoming Superman movie, from comics like All-Star Superman to kaiju films like Godzilla: Minus One, but we didn't expect his own recent history to be a key part of the project as well. Not literally, of course.

In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Gunn was asked about the aftermath of his controversial Marvel firing due to some old tweets, which he once said offered him the "experience of feeling truly loved" for the first time, as many friends reached out to him for support.

"There's no doubt that without that experience, I don't think that I would've written the Superman that I wrote. I definitely wouldn't be doing this job if I didn't get fired, but I don't know if I'd be doing this job even if it wasn't for that. I just don't think that a character that pure would've quite appealed to me," Gunn explained.

"I don’t think that opened the door to me writing the pure Superman," he continued. "That opened the door for me to stop creating so that people would like me. That's downplaying it – so people would love me. I think on some level, everything I had done came from a pleasing place."

DC originally asked James Gunn to direct Superman 7 years ago, but he said he wasn't ready at that time. "I needed the right way in," he explained in the interview.

"And that required time to think through a few thousand options before I got to the way that I thought worked. But I do also think that my life, and career, has been a gradual softening of the edges. I still like black comedy. I still have edges. But I used to like provoking a lot. And today, although I still seem to do it, I don't really like doing that. In my heart, I'm pretty sentimental. I just believe in basic human values. I think Guardians of the Galaxy was a good starter kit for that."

Shortly after firing him, Marvel reinstated Gunn as the writer and director of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, which turned out to be the most emotional of the trilogy, and marked his last Marvel movie before moving on to DC. Gunn looked back at how all those events and his work with the Guardians paved the way for Superman.

"They [Guardians] have a lot of heart, but they do have their own weirdness and oddities and edginess, and Superman isn't that, even though he does from the outside have a lot of oddness. A flying dog in a cape is odd. Giant walking robots, and kaijus – that's all odd. But the very-good nature of him, this really strong belief in what's right, sometimes perhaps to a fault, is what makes Superman who he is.

"And that is not Star-Lord or Rocket. That's not a guy who's angry or covering up his emotions. He's pretty pure. And so getting to the place where I could write that character was a journey. In the past I would've done it through making fun of the character, and I don’t think that's what I do here. I'm less afraid now than I used to be. I allow myself to be purely creative more than I used to. And I thought I was being purely creative, but a lot of times it was just anger releasing itself in another way. I'm less afraid of being goofy or sentimental, or boring or straight."

Superman is released on July 11, 2025. For more, check out our guides all the upcoming DC movies and shows on the way as well as our guide to watching the DC movies in order.