Peacemaker

Christopher "Chris" Smith, also known as the Peacemaker, is a fictional antihero in the DC Extended Universe (DCEU) and DC Universe (DCU) media franchises, based on the Charlton / DC Comics character of the same name. Adapted for film by writer/director James Gunn, he is portrayed by John Cena. Smith operates as a vigilante who aims to achieve peace at any cost, which results in a 30-year prison sentence at Belle Reve Penitentiary. He is approached by the facility's warden and the director of A.R.G.U.S., Amanda Waller, to join a strike team called Task Force X aka the Suicide Squad composed of other inmates on an infiltration mission en route to the remote island of Corto Maltese. Upon turning on his teammates, secretly by under orders of Waller, and being incapacitated during the mission, he is nursed back to health by A.R.G.U.S. and sent on another mission immediately by her afterwards, now being tasked with accompanying a group of alumni from A.R.G.U.S. to prevent a world-threatening epidemic known as "Project Butterfly". As of 2022, the character is a central figure in DC media, having appeared in two projects thus far: the feature film The Suicide Squad (2021) and the first season of the eponymous HBO Max streaming television series Peacemaker, both set in the DCEU. The character is set to return in the latter show's second season, set in the soft rebooted DCU. This version of Peacemaker also guest appeared as a DLC fighter in Mortal Kombat 1, with Cena reprising his role. Character development and execution Background In October 2018, James Gunn was hired by Warner Bros. to write and direct a planned sequel to the DC Extended Universe (DCEU) film Suicide Squad (2016), after he had just been fired from Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures as writer/director of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) film Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023), in light of a series of controversial tweets he had made many years prior that he would later apologize for. While he would be almost immediately reinstated by Disney and Marvel Studios following his hiring by Warner Bros. & DC Films, his commitment to his engagement with the latter studios meant that production on Vol.