James Gunn Lifts the Lid on DC’s Creature Commandos

DC Comics fans got a teaser for Creature Commandos at July’s San Diego Comic-Con; now, we know exactly when the animated series that will properly kick off James Gunn‘s DC reign will arrive: Thursday, December 5. After the premiere, you can watch a new entry each week on Max through January 16, for a total of seven episodes.

A press release with the date announcement—accompanied by the fiery new photo you see here—reiterated the official logline: “Creature Commandos tracks a secret team of incarcerated monsters recruited for missions deemed too dangerous for humans. When all else fails… they’re your last, worst option.”

It also ran down the stacked cast: Steve Agee as Economos, Maria Bakalova as Princess Ilana, Anya Chalotra as Circe, Zoe Chao as Nina Mazursky, Frank Grillo as Rick Flag Sr., Sean Gunn as GI Robot & Weasel, David Harbour as Frankenstein, Alan Tudyk as Dr. Phosphorus, Indira Varma as the Bride, and Viola Davis as Amanda Waller.

The show is written by Gunn, who’s also one of its executive producers—as well as one of the guys (along with Peter Safran) overseeing this brand-new chapter for DC. Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, he shared his excitement about the show as well as DC’s future. He has his own live-action Superman film arriving next summer, of course, which he describes as a “humongous epic.” Creature Commados, by contrast, is more of “a way for people to just take a little nibble [of the new DC universe] and see what it tastes like.”

In the interview, he likened Creature Commandos to his Marvel trilogy of Guardians of the Galaxy films; just from that official logline you can see the similarities, and Gunn agrees he’s a fan of “oddballs and irregular types and weirdos.” (Also not unlike his Suicide Squad movie characters, come to think of it.) However, there’s a key difference, too: “The Guardians are all really good characters at their heart, and that just isn’t necessarily the case with the creatures.”

Head to EW to read more from Gunn, including how his show’s take on Frankenstein and the Bride will be a bit different than what horror fans are used to from the classic characters; he also teases how Creature Commandos will offer “bunch of hints for things that are coming [in the DC universe] … I think it’s just an extraordinarily fun way to start.”

Creature Commandos kicks off December 5 on Max.

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