Always one to speak candidly to fans about his creative process and the trials and tribulations that go down behind-the-scenes, James Gunn recently revealed that he’s been receiving daily death threats over the fate of characters in his upcoming reboot/sequel The Suicide Squad. While tweeting out a link to his new interview with Den of Geek, Gunn cited a threat he received just that day, and pointed out that it’s happening way too often.
“This morning on IG: “This is a threat. If you kill (character name redacted) I will hatecrime you.” Every. Single. Day,” Gunn wrote.
https://twitter.com/JamesGunn/status/1393355870415712256
In the interview Gunn tweeted, he reiterated earlier remarks that no one is safe in The Suicide Squad, and it’s a decision that he makes entirely based on what serves the story best. “The first thing I had to do was ignore the potential blowback from killing a character,” Gunn explained before walking through his writing process and making it clear that whoever dies wasn’t a “personal choice.” Via Den of Geek:
“It’s all in relationship to the story that I would kill anyone who the story saw fit to kill. I’m working for the story. I’m just the servant of the story. So whatever the story says is what I’m going to do, no matter what the repercussions are for anything. And I believe in the truth of the story. I believe that there was a story out there that needed to be told that I don’t have total control over.”
Of course, it doesn’t set fans’ minds at ease that, when asked during an Instagram Q&A which characters die in the film, Gunn answered “almost all of them.” However, it should go without saying that reacting to that information with death threats is never the right response.
(Via James Gunn on Twitter)
