During DC’s slate reveal event, James Gunn and Peter Safran announced two projects that were unknown to the general audiences and even a large chunk of comic book fans.
These projects were the upcoming animated series, “Creature Commandos” and live-action film, “The Authority”. James Gunn has a history of taking more obscure characters and teams and making them household names like he did with the Guardians of the Galaxy and Suicide Squad. So a few oddball projects were expected to come from Gunn given his reputation.
Creature Commandos
The first thing Gunn announced was “Creature Commandos”. This animated series will likely come before the upcoming “Superman: Legacy”. Gunn said the following about the upcoming project,
“We’re going to cast actors that are going to be able to play the characters in this, as well as in other things, some of which we’ve already cast. I’ve written all seven episodes of this show and it’s in production now.”
James Gunn
The concept art revealed by Gunn and Safran gives us a look at who the team will include.
The members shown going from left to right are Rick Flag Sr., Nina Mazursky, Doctor Phosphorus, Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, G.I. Robot, and even Weasel from “The Suicide Squad”. It is very likely we will see some if not all of these characters appear in the upcoming live action series “Waller”.
The Authority
The other project later announced in the presentation, “The Authority”, is an upcoming film. Gunn had a lot to say about this film describing,
“This is one of my real passion projects. I’ve been working really hard on it with the writers and we’re starting to put together the entire story…The Authority’s a very different kind of superhero story. They are basically good-intentioned, but they think that the world is completely broken and the only way to fix it is to take things into their own hands, whether that means killing people, destroying heads of state, changing governments—basically, whatever they want to do to make the world better…There are morally gray characters (in our DCU), of which these are.”
James Gunn
The Authority and its characters come from WildStorm which is a comic imprint that was bought by DC and folded into DC comics.
There was one image Gunn showed of the characters from the comics and it is likely that this will be the lineup seen in the film.
The characters shown above are Swift, The Doctor, Apollo, Midnighter, Jenny Sparks, The Engineer, and Jack Hawksmoor.
Speculation
It was teased that “Superman: Legacy” will lead directly into this film, which could mean a possible cameo from the new Man of Steel. Some fan speculation is saying it is possible Superman could unite the Justice League to square off against The Authority at some point.
Thoughts
Given James Gunn’s past with turning obscure characters and teams into fan favorites, we have faith in what Gunn will do with the “Creature Commandos” and “The Authority” despite how odd they might sound.