Everyone knows that James Gunn being fired as the director of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 directly led to the chain reaction of events that saw him end up as the co-CEO of DC Studios a little over four years later, but what shouldn’t go unmentioned is that Mel Gibson of all people could have prevented it from happening.
After being given his marching orders by Kevin Feige, Gunn was offered the pick of any property he wanted by DC, leading him to settle on The Suicide Squad. That of course led directly into spinoff series Peacemaker, which ingratiated him with the top brass to such an extent that he and Peter Safran were tasked to oversee the entire franchise’s future from boardroom level.
You may be wondering how Gibson fits into all of this, but breaking down the timeline is fascinating stuff. When a direct sequel to David Ayer’s Suicide Squad was in development, Warner Bros. was initially aiming to fast-track the project in the hopes the first installment’s healthy box office performance would offset its status as the DCU’s worst-reviewed entry.
Gibson confirmed in early 2017 that he was in talks to direct Suicide Squad 2, even though he’d already called Batman v Superman “a piece of sh*t” by that point while blasting the superhero genre in general. Reports claimed that the job was his if he chose to sign on the dotted line, but he ended up ruling himself out of the running later that summer.
Gunn wasn’t named as the man in charge of the sequel/reboot hybrid until October of 2018, only three months after he’d been booted from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which really makes you think. If Gibson had said yes to Suicide Squad, it would have entered production in early 2018, long before the Guardians creator’s unsavory tweets that cost him his job resurfaced.
Had that happened, there wouldn’t have been any need for the property to be relaunched under the current chief’s stewardship in the first place, and the butterfly effect would have then bled into not just the existence of Peacemaker, but the entire complexion of DC as we know it today.