It’s an auspicious start for the inaugural film for Warner Bros.’ DC Studios and its rebooted DC Universe, which is also co-run by Gunn.
“I had lost all the power I had, I had lost the ability to cast anybody, I had lost everything,” Gunn recalled.
He said this period of his life helped him have a realization about himself.
“I realized that everything I had done was really to be rich and famous so that people would love me. And I wanted people to love me,” he said.
But hearing 8,000 people chanting his name at a Comic-Con event in Brazil still left him feeling empty.
Instead, after he was let go by Disney weeks later, Gunn said he “got so much love”—from Jennifer Holland, his then-girlfriend and now-wife, as well as the other cast members from the Guardians of the Galaxy movies like Chris Pratt, Pom Klementieff, and Dave Bautista.
“I was overwhlemed with it, and I experienced being loved for the first time,” Gunn said. “I went to sleep that night going, you know, this started out as the worst day of my life, but I actually think it’s the best day of my life. Because I learned that I don’t need to tap dance till the bones are showing through my toes to get people to like me.”
It meant he could no longer work with Marvel Studios and Disney, which had rehired Gunn in 2019 to make Guardians of the Galaxy 3
But it did mean he would get to write and direct his own take on Superman, about his early years in Metropolis. Superman is now in theaters.
