Fans are ready to meet John Cena's Peacemaker once again, with the series premiering on HBO Max in just one week. What they may not be aware of is the interesting story behind how the spin-off series came to be, but director James Gunn has nothing to hide and shared the secret.
It is already known that the upcoming HBO Max series was written by Gunn during the ongoing pandemic. When one fan asked Gunn whether he wrote the Peacemaker script to pass time during the pandemic, Gunn was more than glad to confess “essentially, yes.” Turns out that the best way to kill time for Gunn in quarantine was to write a whole show about a fan-favorite character, with absolutely no guarantee whether it would be produced.
On his Twitter account, Gunn revealed that back in August 2020, he had pitched the concept of a spin-off series from The Suicide Squad, which was in post-production at the time, to HBO Max. “I was quarantined and having anxiety and post on TSS was mostly done and didn’t fill my time,” he wrote on Twitter. He wrote the entire plot as a creative outlet, and did't think much about the outcome. However, HBO Max was ready to take the talks to the story boards.
After HBO Max decided to produce the series, Gunn had to write the scripts for the eight-episode Peacemaker series “in a frenzied two months,” and filming began in January 2021. Within a year, the filming, production, and editing was all completed, and the series releases exactly a year after its first day of shoot. “It’s a much faster schedule than a big film,” explained Gunn.
While the crew filmed Peacemaker, The Suicide Squad was still in post-production and Gunn was also preparing for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. It was already known that he would return to the Marvel Studios project after he was done with his DC commitments, but with Peacemaker confirmed, he wanted to finish work on the series before focusing entirely on the Marvel Cinematic Universe once again.
Peacemaker is the first series that is a part of the DC Extended Universe, and Gunn has stated that he would like to work on more seasons in the future. This isn’t necessarily the end of the line for Cena's fan-favorite character, and viewers may just get to see more of him in the coming projects.
Peacemaker premieres on HBO Max on January 13, 2022.
Source: James Gunn/Twitter