James Gunn Early Outline Had White Supremacist Superheroes

For those who really do wanna wanna a taste of Peacemaker season 2, the wait is over as the show goes on tomorrow on HBO Max.

Season 2 deals with the events following the death of Christopher Smith’s (John Cena) white supremacist father, Auggie Smith played by Robert Patrick. But there’s way more. Smith aka Peacemaker finds another dimensional portal and begins to indulge in a life that’s so much sweeter than his real life, particularly with g.f. Harcourt (Jennifer Holland).

Gunn, on today’s Crew Call, tells us while it was his original intention to write season 2 of Peacemaker before Superman, that whole plan changed once he took the reigns at Warner Bros DC Studios. The whole blueprint for the multi-dimensional universe in Superman wound up playing a big role in Smith’s future storyline which Gunn wrote post his Man of Steel.

But there was an initial draft that Gunn scrapped.

“The first time I wrote a rough outline of season 2, it had to do with other white supremacist superheroes who were after Peacemaker for killing his father because he was their comrade,” says Gunn, “For me, it played a little bit too much like season one and I wanted to turn the story on its heels.”

“I wanted Peacemaker to be this character who had to really deal with the ramifications of his actions in season one, and deal with his emotional reality of the demons that he discovered in season one and how does he face that. That seemed to work much better for that.”

One of the inspirations for Gunn was the Philip Roth novel The Counterlife.

“Peacemaker sees this reality that’s like his, but better in seemingly every way, so how does he deal with that from an emotional standpoint and face the ghosts from his past that he loved and killed? It seemed potent especially when mixed with the love story.

Gunn talks to us about his relief in Superman being a success (the movie is closing in on $600M worldwide gross) and blasting off his DC Studios phase one. He is joined on Deadline’s Crew Call by his Peacemaker DP Sam McCurdy (who won an Emmy for Cinematography One-Hour Series last year for Shōgun) and the two chat about season 2’s visual aesthetic.

Gunn is busy writing his follow-up to Superman, the treatment of which is complete. As he’s mentioned previously, it’s not a direct sequel to Superman but involves the characters we met in this summer’s film with Kal-El figuring prominently.

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