Luca Guadagnino was set to begin filming Sgt. Rock for DC Studios this summer, but the project has been delayed. While conflicting reports have surfaced about the reasons behind the setback, James Gunn has confirmed that Sgt. Rock is still moving forward — it just needs a few creative adjustments before production can begin.
“I feel like we’re in a pretty good place,” Gunn told Entertainment Weekly. “We’re still moving forward, but it’s not going to be…What would Peter want me to say here? … So it’s still moving forward, but, yeah, right now it wasn’t exactly where I wanted it to be creatively, and so it needs to change a little bit.“
Some have suggested that scheduling conflicts were the reason for the delay, due to the project’s plan to shoot outdoors, but others reported concerns about Guadagnino’s lack of experience with large-scale action.
The script, written by Justin Kuritzkes, is said to be a pulpy, Indiana Jones-style adventure. The story follows Sgt. Rock (played by Colin Farrell) as he teams up with a female French Resistance fighter in a race to find the legendary Spear of Destiny—the artifact said to have pierced the side of Jesus Christ and rumoured to possess supernatural powers—before it falls into Nazi hands. How much of this might change remains to be seen.
Meanwhile, Guadagnino has filled his schedule with another project. He’s set to helm Artificial, a film which recounts the tumultuous period at artificial intelligence company OpenAI in 2023, when CEO Sam Altman was fired and rehired in a matter of days. Andrew Garfield (We Live in Time), Monica Barbaro (A Complete Unknown), and Yura Borisov (Anora) are in early talks to star. It’s assumed that Garfield will play Altman, Barbaro will play chief technology officer Mira Murati, and Borisov will play Ilya Sutskever, a co-founder who led the movement to boot Altman out of the company. There’s also that American Psycho remake that’s still in the works.
We will soon get our first real look at the DC Universe, as Gunn’s Superman is set to hit theaters on July 11.
