Pop culture commentator John Campea predicted that James Gunn will exit as DC Studios CEO to become the heir apparent to Kevin Feige at Marvel Studios following Paramount’s purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery.
After Netflix chose to decline to engage in a bidding war with Paramount, Campea declared that it was the darkest day in storytelling since movie theaters and studios decided to shut down over the Covid-19 scare.
Citing an October 2025 article from Bloomberg claiming that Paramount wanted to retain the creative teams from Warner Bros., which would include DC Studios CEOs James Gunn and Peter Safran if they purchased the company, Campea shared his prediction that Gunn would ask to be let go of his contract so he does not join Paramount.
“It’s going to take about 8 months to a year for this deal to finalize. … Sometime before the end of the year I 100% guarantee — again, I haven’t spoke to James Gunn, I’m just telling you what I think — but I am 100% sure that by the end of the year, James Gunn is going to go to David Zaslav and say, ‘It’s been nice, but there’s no way I’m working those guys. So can you please let me out of my contract?’ And I think David Zaslav will let him out of his contract.”
“And then I think he’s going to end up back at Marvel and he will become Kevin Feige’s heir apparent to take over Marvel after Kevin Feige finally goes,” he declared.
“I just don’t see any reality in which James Gunn stays,” he added. “He’s going to quit. And then just like when he left Disney, every single other studio is going to offer him whatever job he wants.”
In a subsequent video, he listed five reasons why he thinks this is the case:
Budget cuts
End of creative autonomy
He successfully launched the DCU
Options from other studios
A return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe
Campea’s prediction comes across more as a sales pitch for Gunn than anything else. It frames everything Gunn has done as positive when in reality the only thing the guy has any claim to fame is that he crafted a surprise hit with Guardians of the Galaxy, despite the atrocious ending, and has basically cruised in Hollywood based on that single success.
Just look at his box office returns. The first Guardians of the Galaxy film had a worldwide gross of $770.8 million. The second one did better at $869 million. The third one saw a decline to $845.5 million. Not only is that worse than the second one straight up without factoring inflation, but if you factor in inflation, it’s worse than the original.
Superman did worse than all three of those films. It only grossed $624.3 million.
On the TV side, Peacemaker also saw its viewership decline in Season 2 as well. The first season had a finale around 548,000 U.S. households according to Samba TV while the second season finale only did 435,000 U.S. households. The second season only charted on Nielsen’s top 10 list during the week of its finale with 398 million minutes total.
Not only have his box office grosses as well as TV ratings declined, but from a purely creative standpoint his endeavors have been mediocre and subpar. Peacemaker and Creature Commandos are just political propaganda.
And Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 exposed Gunn as a woke ideologue when he defended race swapping The High Evolutionary. His argument was that there were too many white characters so they deserved to be race-swapped. When asked to apply his logic in reverse he argued, “it would not make sense to take a character originally another ethnicity and make them white because there are already so many white superheroes.”
In fact, he claimed it was racist to criticize race swaps and that it was done “to more effectively reflect our world.”
Gunn’s arguments are a load of hogwash and always were given that studios made it abundantly clear they had quotas to push racial division and discrimination.
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This guy made one good movie in Guardians.
ONE.
And I'd argue that one success was more due to Chris Pratt's charisma and a stroke of good luck--perfect casting for a perfect role. (Like Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow, which the studio hated originally and tried to "correct" until test audiences proved them wrong.)
I'd also argue it's done more harm than good as Marvel has shamelessly and relentlessly tried to make every property since into its own version of Guardians. The fact that it's failed so spectacularly, and Gunn has likewise failed at everything since, gives weight to the original Guardians being a happy accident that neither Disney, nor Gunn understand as they cannot replicate that success.
Even Disney isn't that stupid. Feige's more likely to tap Favreau, now that he's not taking over Star Wars.