DC Studios co-chiefs James Gunn and Peter Safran emphasized that the release date for Season 2 of the hit Max series Peacemaker is still on track for August.
Meanwhile the other Suicide Squad spinoff series, Waller, starring Oscar winner Viola Davis as the amoral U.S. government espionage director who dispatches the criminal misfit Suicide Squad team on missions, remains in the works. However, it’s been a hard road for the show.
Safran explained, “We’ve taken a couple of cracks at Waller and we haven’t been able to land it.”
“We’re still working on it,” said Gunn.
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“Waller has been tough, the strike was tough on Waller, there was a certain amount time that we needed to do Peacemaker first,” he continued.
Added Gunn, “We were going to go with Waller before Peacemaker (Season 2), but I wrote Peacemaker quickly and were ready to go.”
Davis first portrayed the character of Amanda Waller in David Ayer’s 2016 Suicide Squad movie and continued to play her into Gunn’s film and TV iterations of the IP.
DC’s other Max series Lanterns goes, Gunn and Safran are hopeful it will debut in early 2026.
Gunn called the Season 2 shoot of Peacemaker “a harrowing, dizzying and wonderful experience.”
Peacemaker follows the escapades of Peacemaker, a role that star John Cena originated in Gunn’s 2021 film The Suicide Squad. Peacemaker is a vainglorious man who believes in peace at any cost, no matter how many people he has to kill to get it. The show’s cast includes Danielle Brooks, Jennifer Holland, Freddie Stroma, Chukwudi Iwuji, Steve Agee and Robert Patrick.
Season 2 of the HBO series will welcome Frank Grillo to the cast. Grillo will play Rick Flag Sr in live-action form. Grillo first voiced the animated version of his character in the Max animated series Creature Commandos.
Filming for the second season of the superhero series wrapped in November 2024.
Gunn wrote all eight episodes of Peacemaker Season 1 and directed five, including the first one. Gunn, Safran and Matt Miller serve as executive producers on the series, with Cena as co-executive producer and Stacy Littlejohn as consulting producer.
The Peacemaker finale, at the time of its airing on February 17, 2022, set a single-day viewership record for then-frosh streamer Max, repping a ratings climb of 44% since the show’s premiere date in January 2022.