In 2025, DC Studios was about to begin production on a period war film, but cancelled the shoot at the last minute. A year later, we’re finally getting details on what that film could have been. Comic book movies have increasingly become frameworks for making movies in other genres. When Gunn introduced his “Gods & Monsters” slate, James Gunn was clear he wanted to make genre movies that just happened to have superheroes. The filmmaker said, “You need to tell stories that don’t just pretend to be different genres, but actually are different genres.” The Suicide Squad was a mission film modeled on movies like The Dirty Dozen and The Great Escape. HBO’s Lanterns is a detective story with extraterrestrial origins. The upcoming Clayfaceis the DCU’s first R-rated horror film. One of the first films added to the lineup after the initial slate announcement was a more traditional war film starring one of DC’s longest-running heroes. The film was being helmed by a critically beloved director, whose work didn’t necessarily make him the prime candidate for a comic book movie. Just as cameras were set to roll on the shoot, the movie was brought to a halt. Making the character’s 66-year mission to the screen a failure. Now the filmmaker behind that attempt is opening up about what his war film would have looked like.
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Luca Guadagnino was set to direct Sgt. Rock off a script written by screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes. Colin Farrell was attached as the titular Sergeant of Easy Company, and the director had begun looking for soldiers to fill his platoon. One of those soldiers was expected to be Mike Faist, the star of Guadagnino’s Challengers with Zendaya. In a recent profile on GQ, when asked about Sgt. Rock, Faist would only say he and Guadagnino “remain talking about things from time to time.” When asked for follow-up, Kuritzkes added, “we were more or less in prep,” before giving more details about the movie.
The film would have had a different tone than most comic book movies, calling the effort “pretty experimental.” Considering Guadagnino’s previous efforts included Call Me By Your Name and collaborations with Kuritzkes on the films Challengersand Queer, that idea tracks. For his part, the writer says he was “so excited for that movie.” He added, “None of the people who were planning on doing it were people who were particularly interested in making big superhero movies.… Sgt. Rock was very much a superhero movie that was about everyday heroes, humans, normal people, where the superheroes were really not the focus at all. So it was a pretty experimental thing.”
Between a Rock and a Hard Place
Sgt. Rock made his comic debut in 1959’s Our Army at War #81, created by artist Joe Kubert and writer Robert Kanigher. Sgt. Frank Rock was a WWII infantry sergeant with no superpowers, commanding Easy Company, a fictional unit sharing the name of the very real E Company of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment depicted in HBO’s Band of Brothers. Hollywood’s appetite for war films has put Sgt. Rock in the spotlight for adaptation before. In the late ’80s, Arnold Schwarzenegger was attached to a Sgt. Rock film, with a script from Die Hard and Commando writer Steven E. de Souza. The studio even went so far as to distribute promotional pins at San Diego Comic-Con featuring a rendering of the actor with a title treatment.
As the decades went by, more filmmakers would attempt a take on the material. There were scripts from screenwriting stalwarts like David Webb Peoples, who wrote Unforgivenand co-wrote Blade Runner and 12 Monkeys; Apocalypse Now and Red Dawn writer John Milius; and Brian Helgeland, who won a <a href="https://comicvibe.com/10-of-the-best-new-childrens-books-out-in-october-2026/” title=”10 of the Best New Children's Books Out in October 2026″>Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for L.A. Confidential and directed A Knight’s Tale. Directors also came and went. Guy Ritchie was attached to the project in 2008. Then The Hunger Games: Catching Fire director Francis Lawrence tried to develop a version that would have the DC character fighting a war in the future. That version stalled, and Sgt. Rock went on the back burner again. The fact that a Sgt. Rock movie got so close to production in 2025 almost seems like a massive feat.
James Gunn has said he still wants to see Sgt. Rock on screen, though Kuritzkes has pointed the finger in his direction for what happened to their film. When asked about the movie’s cancellation, he said, “You can ask DC Studios.” It’s possible the film just didn’t line up with Gunn’s plans for the DCU. Sgt. Rock did make it to screens in 2019 as an animated short in the straight-to-DVD DC Showcase: Sgt. Rock (included with Batman: Hush), where he was voiced by The Boys’ Karl Urban. The short actually had the soldier leading the Creature Commandos against Nazi zombies. He would also briefly appear in the DCU’s first cartoon series, Creature Commandos, fighting alongside G.I. Robot in flashbacks to his time in WWII. In 2022, another actor gave Gunn even more ammo to adapt the Allied soldier into the DCU. Evil Dead star Bruce Campbell wrote a six-issue miniseries, Sgt. Rock vs. The Army of the Dead, in which Easy Company has to battle Nazi zombies in 1944. With Creature Commandos and Peacemaker setting the tone for Nazi killing, maybe it’s time for Dawn of the Deadwriter Gunn to break out his typewriter and do what he does best: update Sgt. Rock himself. Until then, the only zombie around here is this franchise.
Were you excited for Sgt. Rock before its abrupt cancellation? Who’s your ideal actor to play the World War II soldier? Let us know in the comments.
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