James Gunn Reveals Which Of His Movies Was The Hardest To Make

Directing movies seems like a dream job to most people — is anything better than telling some of the most talented people in the world what to do? — but every job has a downside. Directing a studio film is a high-pressure task; a director has to wrangle a crew of dozens or even hundreds of people to complete a job that must be done as quickly as possible. For bigger films, hundreds of millions of dollars might be on the line, and mistakes can be costly. It's also more physically demanding than one might expect; even a film that's produced on a comfortable Hollywood sound stage may still involve 16-hour work days for months on end. To be clear, that doesn't mean directing isn't still a dream job that only the luckiest get to do. But it's also still a job.

As a director, James Gunn has been a part of the superhero film revolution of the past decade or so. When the first Guardians of the Galaxy trailer dropped, The Hollywood Reporter considered it Marvel's riskiest film since the first Iron Man, but Gunn's winning script and sure-handed direction made Guardians a surprise hit for Marvel. After Guardians, he went on to direct the sequel, and, after Gunn was fired by Disney (he's since been reinstated), he'll eventually be making a third Guardians film. He's also helming  The Suicide Squad, the sequel to 2016's dismal Suicide Squad. But when a fan on Twitter asked Gunn which of his movies was the most challenging to direct, he didn't point to his Marvel or D.C. Comics tentpole films. Instead, he went with the second feature film he ever made.