James Gunn offers a tease of what audiences can expect from the soundtrack of the John Cena-led Suicide Squad spin-off series Peacemaker. The HBO Max title is set after the events of the latest DC Extended Universe film and will explore the origins of the titular hero prior to the movie. Cena reprises his role from The Suicide Squad alongside Steve Agee and Jennifer Holland with the rest of the cast including Danielle Brooks, Robert Patric, Freddie Stroma and Chukwudi Iwuji.
Gunn began development on Peacemaker while completing The Suicide Squad in lockdown for his own fun until DC Films approached him for any ideas on potential characters to spin-off. The writer/director penned all eight episodes of the series and directed five of them, with production running from January to July of this year and a premiere window of January 2022. As the series gears up for a first look at next month's DC FanDome, Gunn is offering new details on the highly-anticipated show.
Gunn recently opened up about new details for Peacemaker during the Television Critics Association summer press tour (via Collider). When discussing the music choices for the HBO Max series, the creator/director kept mum on specific tracks for the show but did tease the theme of the soundtrack. See what Gunn said below:
"It really is all hair metal. A lot of 80s hair metal, but it's also a lot of modern sleaze rock and hair metal that comes out of Europe — a lot of really great bands that people don't know about.I love that stuff but there's also a lot of really bad hair metal. So it was fun finding the really good stuff to inject the series with flavor, which we keep throughout the whole first season."
Gunn has certainly made a name for himself at this stage in his career for his musical choices in his projects, namely after Guardians of the Galaxy's Awesome Mix Vol. 1 becoming the first soundtrack album in history to top the US Billboard 200 chart and its Top Soundtracks chart for 11 consecutive weeks and 16 in total. Leading up to the release of The Suicide Squad, Gunn teased the film would include one song from his favorite artists and even released a playlist of tracks he had to cut. His new comments for Peacemaker nicely fall in line with retaining the tone and style of his filmmaking as he traverses the world of television for the first time.
Gunn's latest tease of the Peacemaker soundtrack also line up with the creator/writer's previous comments, in which he called it the favorite of all of his projects. Unlike The Suicide Squad and Guardians of the Galaxy movies, the decision to shift towards a lot of hair metal for the series' soundtrack is certainly a departure for his normal playlists though nicely fits with the chaotic nature of Cena's titular hero. Only time will tell what fans can expect when Peacemaker arrives on HBO Max in January.
Source: Collider
