James Gunn has confirmed he is actively “working on” a Viola Davis-led Amanda Waller series.
Davis starred as Amanda Waller in Suicide Squad and its sequel, The Suicide Squad, as their amoral Task Force X leader, most recently reprising the role in the first season of Peacemaker.
News of a spinoff devoted entirely to the ruthless government espionage director was first announced back in 2022 and was said to be a drama rather than a comedy. Speaking to People recently, Superman director Gunn reaffirmed that he and DC Studios co-CEO Peter Safran are still “working on” the long-gestating series.
“We’re working on it, so we’ll see what happens,” he said. “Some things have moved faster than others. Waller’s not been the fastest. But I can’t wait to see Viola put on their Waller pants again.”
It echoes sentiments the pair made to Deadline earlier this year, where they said they’d found the project was difficult to execute, noting they had to prioritise the previous Suicide Squad spin-off, the John Cena-starring Peacemaker.
“We’ve taken a couple of cracks at Waller, and we haven’t been able to land it,” Safran said at the time, with Gunn adding: “We’re still working on it.”
“Waller has been tough, the strike was tough on Waller, there was a certain amount time that we needed to do Peacemaker first. We were going to go with Waller before Peacemaker [Season 2], but I wrote Peacemaker quickly and we were ready to go,” Gunn concluded.
Meanwhile, his latest Superman film was given a three-star review from NME and praised as putting “some pep” back into the long-running franchise.
“To give Gunn his due, he crafts a world that’s as close to the DC Comics Superman that we’ve ever seen, with characters like the shapeshifting Metamorpho (Anthony Carrigan) adding real texture. It’s a promising start-point to his plans for the DC Universe,” it read.
“And while the good-versus-evil plot does little to push the envelope, the idea of Superman being an alien peacekeeper is surely going to stir up political controversies back in Gunn’s MAGA-homeland. Mainly, though, just give us more Krypto – this canine really is super.”
In other news, Gunn recently theorised that negative feelings toward the US may be the reason why Superman is performing better in America than it is worldwide.
