Guardians of the Galaxy director, James Gunn, has been making a name for himself in Hollywood as a writer years before his superhero career, with many unmade films he would have directed and written himself. James Gunn began his career as a writer and associate director for the 1996 black comedy Tromeo and Juliet, slowly moving into further horror comedies and superhero movies in more substantial roles. By 2006, Gunn debuted as a solo director for the sci-fi black horror comedy movie Slither, a cult film that combines many of his typical thematic interests.
As James Gunn progressed in the industry, he was tacked on to major projects with franchise movies like the live-action Scooby-Doo and its sequel as a writer. After a few bombs at the box office with superhero-based movies, James Gunn was given his biggest task yet in 2014: Director of the MCU’s Guardians of the Galaxy. The movie took off way beyond the average Marvel installation, featuring a top-selling soundtrack, commercial success, and critical acclaim for Gunn’s direction. Gunn returned to direct its sequel in 2017 and is preparing for Guardians of the Galaxy's third installation in 2023.
While Gunn’s filmography is relatively small for his current cultural hold and notoriety, he had several films on his list that he intended to create before his Marvel career fully took off. While some of the choices are sequels, remakes, or additions to franchises, it’s sad audiences likely won’t get to see what James Gunn could have done at the helm of these movies.
After writing the screenplays for Scooby-Doo (2002) and its sequel Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (2004), James Gunn had already planned a plot and direction for Scooby-Doo 3. The original movies were helmed by family-film director Raja Gosnell while Freddie Prinze, Jr., Sarah Michelle Gellar, Linda Cardinelli, and Matthew Lillard starred as the Mystery, Inc. gang. The live-action Scooby-Doo franchise based on the classic animated series of the same name bombed with critics, but happened to be blockbuster hits that elevated Gunn’s career. Unfortunately, Scooby-Doo 2 received even less acclaim and revenue than its predecessor, leading the studio to cancel the proposed Scooby-Doo 3.
Before Gunn had received the news that Scooby-Doo 3 wouldn’t be moving forward in 2004, he came up with an elaborate plot for the movie that he would have both written and directed. According to a thread by Gunn on Twitter, he envisioned the third movie to involve Mystery, Inc. traveling to Scotland after locals complain they’re being terrorized by monsters. In a much more reflective plot, Scooby, Shaggy, and the gang would realize the monsters were actually the victims to the Scottish townspeople, having to put into perspective their own prejudices on so-called monsters. James Gunn’s Scooby-Doo 3 would have commented on many issues plaguing society that people find hard to address, which would still be appropriate to introduce if the movie were released today.
Another established franchise movie that James Gunn had a modern live-action twist for, Spy vs. Spy received a full treatment screenplay by Gunn in 1999. Spy vs. Spy is a classic wordless comic strip that involves two identical secret agents, one in white and one in black, who have a continuous feud where they set traps on one another while performing stereotypical espionage activities. Before he had any major credits, Gunn wrote a script with Jay Roach intended to direct and the idea for Nicholas Cage and Eddie Murphy to star. He pitched the movie in a 50-minute meeting with Warner Bros. executives, who ultimately passed on the script.
James Gunn revealed on Twitter that his script was “outrageous,” even including a bit where the two spies hook up their brains to machines that transfer their minds into mechanical cats, spending a quarter of the movie in their out-of-body state. While Warner Bros. passed on Spy vs. Spy, the studio executives still decided to hire Gunn, placing him as a screenwriter for Scooby-Doo, which happened to jump-start his career. Gunn then explained that after his directorial debut, Slither, in 2006, he circled back to his Spy vs. Spy script when Jay Roach approached him to give the movie another try. Unfortunately, by this time, Ron Howard already had his own Spy vs. Spy adaptation in development, which is technically still pre-production today and has never been made.
In a recent Instagram post by James Gunn, the director explained that early in his career he pitched an idea to remake Universal’s Creature from the Black Lagoon. As one of the Universal Classic Monsters, Creature from the Black Lagoon is a well-beloved horror monster movie from the 1950s that spawned one of early horror’s most successful trilogies. The movie follows a group of scientists who travel to South America to research an undiscovered mysterious animal, quickly discovering the Gill-man creature poses a threat to their studies and lives. Creature from the Black Lagoon never overlapped with the Universal monster crossovers in their heydey, so it never received proper nostalgic revival treatment that many other beloved classic horrors have - a problem James Gunn apparently tried to remedy.
Gunn revealed that after the success of his screenplay for Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead remake in 2004, he intended to further his horror adaptations with a classic, forgotten monster. He pitched a screenplay for a new Creature from the Black Lagoon to Universal Studios in 2004, which they turned down because “they didn’t want me to do it.” Universal has recently begun a revamp of their old horror properties with new adaptations of Dracula from Chloe Zhao and 2020’s Invisible Man, so it’s still possible they request Gunn to do a treatment in the future.
Gunn attempted to make another black comedy sci-fi film back in 2007, writing a screenplay and intending to direct the movie Pets. Following Slither, Gunn began working on Pets, which would have entailed a man being abducted by a group of aliens who want to turn him into their very own household pet. The movie went pretty far in the pre-production process for about two years with Ben Stiller attached as a producer, though was unexpectedly canceled with Gunn exiting as the project’s director in 2009. James Gunn revealed in an interview with Variety that he left Pets due to creative differences after the producers, studio, and himself had such different visions of the movie that would have ultimately made it unsatisfying.
In keeping with his classic horror remake trend, James Gunn also reportedly wanted to direct his own adaptation of 1974’s It’s Alive. The original movie, taking its name from a Frankenstein quote, follows a baby that turns out to be a mutant monster that immediately goes on a killing rampage after birth. While it received mixed reviews, It’s Alive spawned two sequels and a 2009 remake that was so bad it had no reviews from critics and only a 6 percent audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes. According to an interview with Indiewire, It’s Alive director Larry Cohen revealed James Gunn approached him with intentions of a remake, but Cohen rejected him when he didn’t have enough money to buy the movie’s rights. It’s unknown if James Gunn even produced a treatment for the script, but thankfully he moved on to bigger and better pictures instead.
Even before his renowned superhero direction had begun, James Gunn was approached by a Fox executive to write a story treatment for Silver Surfer. According to ComicBookMovie.com, it was right after Gunn moved to LA in 1999, so to get himself noticed he wrote an extensive screenplay that involved the comic book character Silver Surfer turning on Galactus, though there would be no Fantastic Four in his movie. The Fantastic Four movies of 2005 and 2007 were poorly received, though their modern superhero takes and blockbuster status predated the craze and revolution that would begin with Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Iron Man in 2008.
Gunn explained that Fox wanted to move ahead with his script, but he had made more momentum with his screenplay for Spy vs. Spy and wanted to focus on that project at the time. Neither movie was made, but it does make one wonder what would’ve happened if James Gunn became a Marvel figure in 1999 instead of 2014. Silver Surfer and Fantastic Four, although included in Marvel, have largely been left out of the MCU, so as the franchise has said goodbye to many of the original Avengers, fans are wondering if the characters will make an appearance sometime soon, and hopefully at the direction of James Gunn’s forgotten screenplay.
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September 20, 2021 at 12:39AM
