news culture Post-Marvel, this Guardians of the Galaxy heroine is looking to embody a legendary Batman foe at DC
Will James Gunn and Peter Safran be able to make DC audiovisual productions real competitors to Disney’s MCU? It’s hard to say at the moment, but the new directing duo is not idle, and several actors are already showing their interest!
DC: Start over to seriously compete with the MCU
For nearly 15 years, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has dominated cinema entertainment. With dozens of films on the clock, storylines being followed and commented on, Marvel and Disney have been able to enforce a formula that has endured. Now completed with multiple television series on Disney+, the MCU continues its journey by exploring the multiverse. Phase IV was only partially convincing, but everything is already planned until 2026 and the films work overall.
DC has struggled in the face of such outrageous success, which has seen Marvel place 6 films among the top 15 greatest hits of all time. Man of Steel, Batman V Superman, Suicide Squad, or even Justice League and Aquaman didn’t have the success we expected, and we felt like DC studios were sailing on sight while trying to install their own cinematic universe. Then doubts arose, and more recent films like Black Adam or Shazam! Fury of the Gods are far from reaching Marvel’s numbers. What a consolation to Warner Bros. in his idea of starting over by getting Peter Safran and James Gunn to run the studios.
Their mission: to completely rethink DC’s approach to offer a roadmap that encompasses a cohesive array of series, films, and derivative productions capable of tickling Marvel. And so much to say that they did not drag. When they spearheaded the project last October, they scrapped Man of Steel 2 and Wonder Woman 3, leaving The Flash, Blue Beetle, and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom on the schedule.
Fog in poison ivy? And why not ?
The new era of DC movies begins in 2025 with the movie Superman: Legacy, but many actors seem interested. Just recently, an MCU star hinted that she’d be willing to follow James Gunn, even if it’s only for a small role. That star is Karen Gillan, known to Guardians of the Galaxy fans as Nebula, Gamora’s sister, the second daughter of the terrible Thanos. In a recent interview with Total Film magazine, she not only said that if James Gunn called her, she would follow, but that she would very much like to play the iconic character of Poison Ivy, who has already appeared on the big screen of Uma Thurman is impersonated in the movie Batman & Robin:
I’ve always thought poison ivy was cool. Maybe it would be cool to do something like that! Honestly, even if James asked me to play an alien who sits in the background and doesn’t speak, I’d say yes (laughs). Because working with him has been one of the great joys of my career so far. With Nebula, I felt like I would only come for eight days of shooting on the first film. And then it got longer and longer. And here we are, nine or ten years later. I love this character so much and I feel like there are endless things that could be done with her. So yeah, of course I’d love to explore it more, but I don’t know if that’s going to happen. Like everyone else, I’m waiting to see what happens.
Very nice compliments that will surely touch the director of Guardians of the Galaxy 3, who now presides over DC’s fortunes in cinema and television. At this time, there is no evidence that the character of Poison Ivy is in the pipeline for any of DC’s future films. The Batman 2 is well in production alongside series dedicated to the Gotham police and the Penguin, but it is a universe separate from the rest and it is impossible to say that it will start with this huge project.
