Superman director James Gunn says it took 3 minutes to come up with early MCU's most important lore "I made up the Infinity Stones in two seconds"

James Gunn is now co-leading DC Studios, but Marvel fans will always have to thank him for a major contribution to the MCU's lore. The Superman director spoke recently about how he introduced the Infinity Stones to viewers in his first Guardians of the Galaxy movie.

"I never understood what any of the phases were in Marvel. I don't know what any of it means. I have no clue what it means. I knew there were Infinity Stones when they said, 'You know, we've been thinking, and we think that maybe some of these things have been Infinity Stones in different ways. And so, could you write up what the Infinity Stones mean?'" Gunn recalled in an interview with GQ.

"When I wrote the scene with The Collector explaining that there was this explosion, and the Infinity Stones were born, and what they mean and where they came from, that was literally me just sitting down for 3 minutes and writing that," he revealed. "And that’s then what became the rest of the Infinity Stones. There was never anybody that said anything other than, 'I think the red thing and the blue thing are going to end up being Infinity Stones'. That wasn't in the plan to begin with.

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"I made up the Infinity Stones in two seconds. I had no idea that was going to become what it was gonna become".

This is not the first time Gunn talks about how he came up with the Infinity Stones origins in the MCU. Back in 2023, during the press tour for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, he claimed to have written the scene in 90 minutes, not three. "I wrote that scene in about an hour and a half, it just like came up with what the Infinity Stones were... and everything's based on that", he told Phase Zero.

Regardless of how long it took Gunn to write that scene, it was definitely pivotal to the entire MCU, and it was the perfect introduction for those viewers who weren't familiar with the Marvel comics. The rest, as they say, is history.

Now, James Gunn has left his Marvel days well behind, as he carries out an ambitious plan for the new DCU and his new Superman leads the global box office. Even Warner Bros. boss David Zaslav has praised Gunn and Peter Safran's work at the head of DC Studios, saying that "the DC vision is clear" and this is just the first step in "a bold 10-year plan."

If you want to know more about DC's future, head on over to our guides on upcoming DC movies and DCU Chapter One: Gods and Monsters. Then dive into our breakdowns of Superman Easter eggs and the Superman post-credits scenes.