Before James Gunn rebooted the DC cinematic universe, the DCEU was full of critical disasters. While there were gems like Wonder Woman in there, David Ayer’s Suicide Squad is considered the lowest point of the franchise by many.
However, the film did do well enough to almost net a sequel. Despite the critical roasting it got from professionals and DC fans alike, it did actually make quite a lot of money — $749.2 million against a $175 million budget. It was the tenth highest-grossing movie of 2016, and to the shock of its haters it even won an Oscar in 2017 for Best Makeup and Hairstyling. A sequel was in development… but then it went away.
Writer Gavin O’Connor got pretty far into the script before everything changed. He told Collider all about it. «It’s another example of the dysfunction of our industry. I had a very specific take. They wanted to do it. I think I was probably three-quarters of the way into the script when they brought in a new regime and all the DC people I was working with were gone.» This new regime was headed by James Gunn, who would release a reboot/semi-sequel called The Suicide Squad to critical acclaim in 2021.
O’Connor’s plan was to make the sequel all about Deadshot (Will Smith) and his daughter (Shailyn Pierre-Dixon). Their relationship formed an important part of the first Suicide Squad and Deadshot was the lead of the movie alongside Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn. However, he did not feature at all in the eventual Gunn-directed movie.
O’Connor remembered writing the script in his bungalow when DC president Walter Hamada came to see him. «There was a knock on the door, and it was the new DC president. He said, ‘So where are you with the script?’ I said ‘It’s almost done,’ and he said ‘Can I read it?’ And I said, ‘Well, you can read it when it’s finished.’ A couple of weeks later, I gave it to him, and he said ‘Can you make it a comedy?'»
The writer didn’t want his father-daughter movie to become a comedy. «I said, ‘That’s not what I wrote, and that’s not the agreement I have with the studio.’ He wanted me to make it into a comedy, and I was like, all right, I guess I won’t be working here.» And that was that. The Will Smith Deadshot movie never saw the light of day.
David Ayer Disowned Suicide Squad
It’s considered that the blame for the original Suicide Squad lies at the feet of Warner Bros execs, not director David Ayer. He declared in 2021, as the new movie was coming out, that he didn’t want ownership over Suicide Squad. In an extensive post on X, then known as Twitter, he wrote, «I put my life into Suicide Squad. I made something amazing. My cut is [an] intricate and emotional journey with some bad people who are sh*t on and discarded (a theme that resonates in my soul). The studio cut is not my movie. Read that again.»
He wished James Gunn luck and then said, «I will no longer speak publicly on this matter.» With that, the whole fiasco that was Suicide Squad was seemingly put to rest.
