After the needless firing of James Gunn from Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, it made me genuinely emotional to see the first trailer for Brightburn lean fully into Gunn’s involvement. James Gunn produces from a script by his brothers Matt and Brian, Brightburn puts a startling, subversive take on a radical new genre: superhero horror.
What if a child from another world crash-landed on Earth, but instead of becoming a hero to mankind, he proved to be something far more sinister? The almost godlike powers of Superman and many others are usually portrayed as heroic, wielded by a being of empathy and understanding. Brightburn takes a bold look at the dark flipside of that coin, and I am fully onboard with this in every way.
Why has it taken this long for Hollywood this long to pose this question, but the Gunn dynasty is the perfect fit to bring this superhero horr-origin story to the big screen.
In addition to making two awesome Guardians movies, Gunn has already brutally (and beautifully) deconstructed the superhero story with his underrated 2010 film Super. If you haven’t seen it I would strongly urge you to check it out as soon as possible. Meanwhile, James Gunn is currently attached to a revamped Suicide Squad 2, so Marvel’s loss is DC’s gain.
Directed by David Yarovesky (Guardians of the Galaxy: Inferno music video), and starring Elizabeth Banks, David Denman, Jackson A. Dunn, Matt Jones and Meredith Hagner, Brightburn will open at cinemas across the UK and Ireland on May 24, 2019.
