James Gunn has had a busy few months.
The new co-chairman and co-CEO of DC Studios is currently finishing up his final Marvel projects, including the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special as well as Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Gunn admits that writing the Holiday Special, a 44-minute special presentation, was a bit easy.
“I’ll be honest, I wrote the screenplay in a few hours, so it just kind of spilled out of me. It was very easy,” Gunn said. “Everything about shooting it was easy. Everything about getting the performances out of people was easy, whereas Vol. 3 was torture in every way.”
Gunn didn’t elaborate on why Guardians of Galaxy Vol. 3 was so torturous, though his complex history with the series and the fact that it’s his final MCU movie might be a clue. Gunn is currently deep into post-production on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, calling it “emotional.”
“It’s a big movie, and it’s so different from the special because the special is so wacky and insane,” the director said. “The movie is so emotional, but it’s been a real joy making it. So it’s coming along great. I still have a ton of visual effect shots I’m working on, and of course, putting the score together with John Murphy, which is gigantic. So those are the things I’ve been focusing on most, lately.”
The Holiday Special, meanwhile, will see the Guardians taking on Christmas as Drax and Mantis try to help Peter Quill rediscover his love of Christmas. How will they ever do that? Well, they decide to gift him his favorite actor, Kevin Bacon.
“The idea of doing a holiday special with the Guardians was both a really funny idea to me and also something I really wanted to do,” Gunn said. “And once I sat down and started trying to figure out what the story was, the Kevin Bacon idea came up very, very quickly, and I wrote the whole story within a few hours.”
Guardians 3 will be Gunn’s last project in the Marvel Studios franchise before he dives head-in to leading DC Studios through a new era. Alongside Peter Safran, the duo look to be the Kevin Feige of DC, and they are very busy planning the next decade of programming. However, it seems the duo is planning to unveil their master plan soon.
Carson Burton is a freelance news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter at @carsonsburton.
