Writer Gavin O’Connor explains why a direct sequel to David Ayer’sSuicide Squadwas replaced by James Gunn’sDCEUThe Suicide Squadreboot.Suicide Squadintroduced Margot Robbie’s extremely popular Harley Quinn and Viola Davis' superbly-portrayed Amanda Waller. However, David Ayer’sSuicide Squadwas met with overwhelmingly negative reviews. Five years later, James Gunn wrote and directedthe soft-rebootThe Suicide Squad, which barely referenced the events of the first movie.
In a new interview withCollider,writer Gavin O’Connor recalls the moment he dropped fromSuicide Squad 2. O’Connor explains he was writing a"specific take"that featured"a father-daughter story with Deadshot and his daughter.“Unfortunately,“the new DC president"wanted to transform Gavin O’Connor’s finished script into a comedy. Since the changes signified a drastic deviation from the original plans and O’Connor’s"agreement [with] the studio,“the writer dropped out of the project. Check out Gavin O’Connor’s comments below:
“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. I was writing on the lot, I got a little bungalow there; my writing partner and I would just meet there and write every day. 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?’ And 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.”
“It was really a father-daughter story with Deadshot and his daughter.”
Suicide Squadestablished an interesting subplot starring Will Smith’s Deadshot and his daughter Zoe. Floyd Lawton’s backstory was only explored through flashbacks, dream sequences, and lines of dialog, but his enmity with Batman and his desire to reunite with his daughter was made crystal clear.ASuicide Sequelwould have been the perfect place to delve deeper into Deadshot’s individual storyand possibly set up his own spinoff. In fact,the DCEU’sDeadshotspinoffcould have been the second or third installment in a three-movie arc for Will Smith’s anti-hero.
At the time, Warner Bros. was experimenting with different approaches to the expanding DCEU, and David Ayer’sSuicide Squadwent through extensive rewrites, reshoots, and reedits that made it much more colorful, fast-paced, and comedic. Warner Bros. seems to have been pushing for a similar tone forSuicide Squad2. Gavin O’Connor refused the idea, andSuicide Squad2didn’t move forward. Then, James Gunn wrote and directed a more comedic yet more explicitThe Suicide Squad.
The seeds for a mostly seriousSuicide Squadmovie with a distinctive style are evident in the theatrical cut of David Ayer’sSuicide Squad. The existence ofthe director’s heavily-discussed “Ayer Cut” of theSuicide Squad, which hasn’t seen the light of day in almost a decade, also suggests that a more serious version of the movie could have hit theaters if the studio didn’t demand a reedit. Without studio interference, Gavin O’Connor’sSuicide Squadsequel could have been possible, and it would have been more consistent with the first movie thanThe Suicide Squad.
