James Gunn explains the extremely unexpected intro sequence to Peacemaker

This week, as you know, Peacemaker premiered on HBO Max, a TV series dedicated to John Cena's slightly square-jawed anti-hero from The Suicide Squad.

If you've had a chance to watch it, you'll know it's as vulgar as it is violent and funny, but perhaps the most unexpected thing about it is the show's opening sequence of dancing and rocking for just over a minute, which creator James Gunn says he created for this reason: "I want to VANQUISH THE SKIP FORWARD BUTTON so people see some of the folks who worked so hard on the show!"

In an interview with Newsweek, Gunn explains more about his thinking and what was the biggest challenge in what he refers to as a "high point of the whole series":

"It's supposed to be over-the-top ridiculous, but remain completely serious."

He continued by explaining that not everyone on the team understood what he was going for:

"Some of them understood it right away. You know, Jen Holland got it right away. And Steve, he got it right away, they've both known me for a long time. John, I think, got it but was very uncomfortable with having to dance, but he worked on it. Danielle [Brooks] was like, 'What? I do not understand what is going on!' And she came in and she's like [waving her arms up and down], 'James, she's telling me to dance like this. What is that?'"

In the end, the hardest thing was to not laugh while doing the dead serious dance according to Steve Agee (who plays the character John Economos in the show), who says:

"But you know, on set, if you notice, none of us are smiling. We're all kind of dead faced. The biggest problem was people kept smiling and James had to be like, 'Alright, we're gonna take it again, do it again. Danielle, don't smile this time, you keep smiling.' That was the hardest part of the number was not smiling while we were shooting it."

If you still haven't watched Peacemaker on HBO, we urge you to do so below.