James Gunn Made Suicide Squad Spinoff Series Peacemaker to Work With John Cena Again

Audiences excited about HBO Max’s upcoming DC Comics comedy series Peacemaker have John Cena to thank for the series—a spinoff of the recent Suicide Squad movie centered around his character from that film—existing in the first place. In fact, show creator, director and executive producer James Gunn, who was first introduced to Cena and the Peacemaker character while making The Suicide Squad, had no plans to make the series at all until he was approached by executive producer Peter Safran and DC Films president Walter Hamada about a possible spinoff, he said today at the Television Critics Association’s annual summer press tour. “If you could do a TV show on any one of the characters from The Suicide Squad, who would you do?” Gunn recalls Safran and Hamada asking him. “I just found something really interesting about Peacemaker because I loved working with John Cena and I thought that he had a lot of acting gifts and comedy gifts that we weren’t really able to fully utilize in the movie.” Besides the desire to work with Cena again, the character of Peacemaker himself—who vows to reach peace no matter the often-violent cost—was also a draw to Gunn. “I thought he was a really cool, interesting character that I thought could be pertinent to today and today’s world in terms of his sort of backwards way of looking at things,” Gunn said. Networks Bet On Franchises Like FBI, CSI to Boost Broadcast’s Fall Ratings Growing the DC Extended Universe The new Peacemaker series, which will premiere on HBO Max in January, is the first TV series in the DC Extended Universe, marking HBO Max's foray into building out a superhero franchise, following the lead of other streamers like Disney+, Amazon Prime Video and Netflix. Other DC-related series on tap for the streamer include two spinoffs from the upcoming Batman reboot feature film, and a Green Lantern show from executive producer Greg Berlanti. Peacemaker explores the origins of the character and what makes him tick, and it is also centered on the relationships and friendships that Peacemaker has with other characters, including Task Force X member Leota Adebayo, played by Danielle Brooks, and Emilia Harcourt, played by Jennifer Holland. Throughout the series, Peacemaker often shows his blind spots and prejudices to deliver both laughs and cringes, something that Gunn said was intentional and purposeful for the series. “His blind sports are in some places pretty terrible, and then in some places are just him being ignorant,” Gunn said. “Peacemaker is almost every guy that I grew up with in Missouri. He isn’t that much different than a lot of people I know. As terrible as he is, he’s also kind of common. And I think that telling that story for a guy like that with those blind spots is important.” What makes him a more likeable character, Gunn added, is that the character played by Cena is always willing to learn. "I think that it's fun to make a superhero or supervillain that has a lot of nuances," he said. In true Gunn fashion, the series also features a carefully curated soundtrack crafted primarily from 1980s hair metal bands. “This was the soundtrack I was probably the most excited to create since the Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack,” Gunn said. “It really is all hair metal with a lot of '80s hair metal and a lot of modern sleaze rock and hair metal that comes out of Europe, and a lot of really great bands that people don’t know about. I love that stuff, but there's also a lot of really bad hair metal, so it was fun finding the really good stuff to inject the series with its flavor."