Depending on which corner of Film Twitter or Reddit you check, the Sgt. Rock movie from DC Studios is either canceled, paused, or shoved into a drawer somewhere next to Ezra Miller’s press schedule. Some sources say it’s delayed until 2026 when director Luca Guadagnino will be free. Others are whispering that it’s quietly dead. And honestly? This kind of thing is Hollywood’s version of Schrödinger’s Cat—until James Gunn posts about it on Threads, it’s both happening and not happening.
You’d think a film like Sgt. Rock would be a slam dunk. A WWII-set DC comic movie where a grizzled American soldier teams up with a French resistance fighter to find the Spear of Destiny before the Nazis do? That’s genre gold. Throw in some occult mysticism, trench warfare, and literal Nazi-punching, and you’ve basically got a spiritual cousin to Inglourious Basterds or Wolfenstein with comic book flair. Hell, it almost feels too easy.
And it wasn’t like this was some B-team project. Luca Guadagnino, a prestige name thanks to Call Me By Your Name, Challengers, and Bones and All, was set to direct. Daniel Craig was reportedly attached at one point. Then Colin Farrell was in talks to step in. The budget was reportedly modest—under $70 million—which in today’s Hollywood is practically an indie. So why isn’t it happening?
Officially, the movie is just on pause. Deadline says they might revisit it in 2026. But we’ve all seen this before. A “pause” often means, “we don’t want to say it’s canceled yet, just in case we change our minds.” It’s the studio equivalent of leaving a text on read.
Unofficially, there are whispers: Craig wasn’t happy with how Queer performed and didn’t want to double-down with Luca on a potentially risky follow-up. Scheduling issues. Weather problems. Colin Farrell was already juggling other commitments. The usual industry excuses. And maybe those are real. Maybe that’s the whole story.
But here’s where I veer into speculation—and I want to be absolutely clear: this is just my take. I could be wrong. I hope I’m wrong. But it’s hard not to notice what kind of movie this is, and what kind of cultural moment we’re living in.
This is a movie about punching Nazis. And in 2025, somehow, that might be considered “controversial.” Not because Nazis are good (they’re not, full stop), but because the word “Nazi” has become a political tripwire. There’s a very vocal subset of the population—many of the 74 million people who voted for Trump—who seem to take any piece of media with a strong moral point of view and twist it into an attack on themselves. They see diversity and moral clarity in movies and scream “woke.” They see a WWII film where a guy kills fascists and ask, “Is this secretly about Trump?”
I’m not saying that’s what Sgt. Rock is. But I am saying that studio execs know that audience exists—and they’re terrified of upsetting them. Especially when Warner Bros. Discovery’s CEO, David Zaslav, is known to be close with Trump himself. You think nobody in that boardroom raised a red flag about a movie where the hero’s whole mission is to stop authoritarian lunatics with ancient relics and delusions of global power?
That’s the thing that makes me sad. Because even if none of that political speculation is true—even if it really is just a scheduling conflict—I still wanted to see this movie. I still want a movie where someone puts their boot to the face of evil and doesn’t stop to debate nuance. WWII stories aren’t subtle. That’s what makes them compelling. They’re reminders of a time when the stakes were clear and the outcome wasn’t guaranteed.
And frankly, DC could’ve used the win. We’re more than two years out from the big “Gods and Monsters” announcement, and the only live-action projects moving forward with real momentum are Superman (which hits theaters July 11), Supergirl (currently filming), Clayface (expected to start shooting by fall), and Peacemaker Season 2 (because James Gunn isn’t going to let his baby die). Everything else from that slate? Ghosted. Booster Gold, The Authority, Paradise Lost—they’ve all either gone silent or are floating in the same development ether as Sgt. Rock.
That’s why this delay feels so frustrating. Because this wasn’t another multiverse mess or a rushed sequel to something nobody liked. Sgt. Rock felt like a new flavor—a war movie with comic book DNA and mythological stakes. It didn’t require deep lore. It didn’t rely on crossover cameos or Phase 17 setup. It just sounded like a damn good story.
And I’ll say it again: this is just my speculation. I don’t have a scoop. I’m not claiming to know what goes on behind the scenes. But I do know this: when studios flinch at making movies about fighting Nazis, something’s gone very wrong.
We know how World War II ended. But the reason we still tell those stories is because the battle against authoritarianism is never really over. And in a time where “woke” is somehow a slur and standing up to fascism gets people side-eyed, maybe what we need most is a movie that reminds us what a righteous fight actually looks like.
So yeah, I’m pissed that Sgt. Rock is on pause. Because maybe we don’t just want to see Nazis get punched again. Maybe we need to.
Hollywood After Dark 