"Took the three that I thought were the most difficult": James Gunn on directing three episodes of Peacemaker Season 2

James Gunn has been busy for a while. In addition to Peacemaker Season 2 and Superman, he has also been running DC Studios since October 2022. Last month, Superman flew into the cinema halls across the world, and it has been profitable. Now, the second season of Peacemaker is gearing up for its release on August 21, 2025.

Turns out James Gunn might be one of the busiest filmmakers of the past few years, as he was working on not one but two DCU projects, Superman and Peacemaker Season 2, simultaneously. When CinemaBlend's Hannah Saulic asked Gunn about his thought process behind choosing the episodes to direct, the filmmaker responded:

"Yeah, it was. I will tell you, with Episodes 2 and 3, it was very easy. Greg Mottola is a guy who's actually been a hero to me for a long time, since I saw his movie ‘The Daytrippers’ when I was younger. And I was like, ‘This movie's amazing.’ And so Greg is the best collaborator of all time. And he understood the show. He totally understood the show. He understood the dramatic part of the show. He understood the comedic part of the show. He understood the non-showiness of shooting the show. But it's not always that easy."

Then, the Peacemaker Season 2 showrunner continued:

"So it can be a little bit difficult at times to turn it over. I originally planned to shoot all the episodes, but then I got hired as the head of the studio and couldn't do that. So it was hard, but I took the three that I thought were the most difficult. You'll see six and eight are my two favorite episodes of the season."

What do James Gunn's comments mean for Peacemaker Season 2?

These comments simply mean that the past few years have been nothing but work for James Gunn. While Gunn was just an employee for DC while filming The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker Season 1, he was handed over keys to the DC Kingdom in October 2022, meaning he has higher responsibilities, a load he shares with Peter Safran.

In addition to directing, James Gunn is now responsible for planning out the entire DC Universe, meaning he is responsible for creating the rough outline of the DCU for the rest of the entire decade. Adding the production and completing his commitments to the MCU in 2022 and 2023, respectively, we can expect that Gunn must've filmed superhero projects back-to-back for nearly three continuous years.

This is why even Peacemaker Season 2 took this long to return. James Gunn addressed this delay in an Entertainment Weekly interview published in May 2025:

"Once I was done with Peacemaker, I had to do Guardians 3, and then when I was about ready to jump [back] into Peacemaker, I got hired to be the head of DC. As soon as I got that job, I made a couple of calls, and the first one was to [Marvel's] Kevin Feige telling him that I'm taking the [job as] head of DC. The second one was to John Cena, and I said, 'I'm getting this gig, and I still want to do Peacemaker, but it's going to have to wait. We're going to have to get Superman working first.'"

Thus, cameras started rolling on Superman on February 29, 2024, which is also the Man of Steel's birthday in the comics. And, the movie was in the middle of production; Peacemaker Season 2 also began production on April 13, 2024.

Gunn, between 2022 and 2025, worked on four different superhero projects (The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Superman, and Peacemaker Season 2), and all of them have been warmly received. What the filmmaker has achieved in this short time could be considered impressive.

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Are you excited for the second season of Peacemaker? Catch it on HBO Max from August 21, 2025.

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