James Gunn Is Celebrating A Huge Milestone For Peacemaker
James Gunn is thrilled by Peacemaker's new success!
This article is more than 2 years old
Filmmaker James Gunn posted a screenshot to his Instagram today indicating pretty good news for his show Peacemaker. According to Business Insider, the hit HBO Max superhero series is currently the most in-demand streaming TV series in the world. Which is to say, Peacemaker is very, very popular. The John Cena-starring series is nearly 70 times more popular than the average show, according to data firm Parrot Analytics. That’s pretty impressive for a spin-off show of the reboot of a little-liked DCEU property called Suicide Squad. But overall, HBO Max originals are growing at an impressive rate compared to their competitors at Netflix and Disney. Check out the post here:
Although Peacemaker is releasing its mere fifth episode tomorrow, it has already gotten rave reviews. The series currently stands at a 94% Critics Rating at Rotten Tomatoes, indicating universal acclaim. That’s not surprising. Like James Gunn’s previous work in superhero entertainment, Peacemaker walks a fine line between action and over the top comedy. That might be best exemplified by the show’s opening credits, a bizarrely blank-faced dance sequence involving the entire primary cast. It is to the titular Peacemaker John Cena’s credit that he went along with that weirdness, even while reportedly feeling like it was beyond the man who once pinned Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. As strange as the show can get, clearly audiences are still on board for what may come.
Peacemaker is James Gunn’s second collaboration with John Cena as the peace-loving hyper-violent superhero. 2021’s The Suicide Squad introduced the character as a soft reboot of the team of criminals tasked with pulling off black ops missions in exchange for lighter prison sentences. It was fortunately much better received than 2016’s Suicide Squad from director David Ayer. Although it retained a few key members of the cast (most notably Margot Robbie as fan favorite character Harley Quinn), Gunn’s approach favored a lighter, though not less gory, tone. While Cena began his career in professional wrestling, he has successfully crossed over into Hollywood in recent years. Along with his fantastic performance in the 2018 comedy Blockers, Cena is showing that he is particularly talented at comedic performances.
James Gunn’s collaboration with Warner Bros for DCEU has been extremely successful, but it is not the only thing HBO Max has going for it. In the next year, a slew of DCEU projects are going to premiere on the streaming platform. Most notably, the upcoming Batgirl film starring Leslie Grace and Brendan Fraser is debuting directly on the service rather than traditional theatrical release. Given the groundswell of fan demand that led to the streaming release of Zack Snyder’s Justice League on HBO Max, and the accompanying re-evaluation of the film, it makes sense that more and more viewers would be drifting to their original series. At the very least, James Gunn, John Cena and the rest of the very talented cast of Peacemaker should be congratulated for this milestone. Just make sure that you stick around for the post-credit scenes when you watch the hit show.
