DCEU: 10 Things You Might Not Know About SUICIDE SQUAD

Geek Dave can't wait to show you his toys.

1. A Suicide Squad film based on the DC Comics supervillian team of the same name was first announced as far back as 2009, but it would be five years until it propoerly gained traction when, in September 2014, David Ayer signed on to direct and write the movie. However, Warner Bros. had already started casting the film and had the release date set, so this gave Ayer just six weeks to write the screenplay!

2. While reading the comic books for research during his development of the screenplay, David Ayer had Margot Robbie in mind for the role of Harley Quinn. However, Emma Roberts had already been offered for the role by Warner Bros at the time of Ayer coming on board, although she subsequently turned it down to star in Scream Queens. Before that Warner Bros had either approached or considered Olivia Thirlby, Imogen Poots, Alison Brie, Rooney Mara, Olivia Wilde, Emma Watson, Emily Browning, Zooey Deschanel, Lily Collins, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Sara Paxton, Amanda Seyfried and Evan Rachel Wood for the role, before Ayer's number one choice of Margot Robbie was cast as Harley Quinn in October 2014.

3. Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Daniel Craig, Matthew McConaughey, Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, Keanu Reeves, Oscar Isaac, Jason Statham, Idris Elba, Matt Damon, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Alexander Skarsgård, Ewan McGregor, Robert Pattinson, Michael Fassbender, Joel Kinnaman and Jon Hamm were all reported at one time or another to have been considered for the role of Deadshot / Floyd Lawton. Will Smith was of course eventually cast, and he was offered the role simultaneously with Independence Day: Resurgence, the sequel to Independence Day which he'd starred in as Capt. Steven Hiller. Smith opted to portray Deadshot, saying that the choice was "nothing about the qualities of the movie—but the choice of trying to go forward versus clinging and clawing backwards."

4. Col. Rick Flag, the heroic Green Beret colonel who leads the Suicide Squad in the field, was one of the first Suicide Squad characters to be cast, but it wasn't Joel Kinnaman who was signed up for the role, rather Tom Hardy. He was forced to drop out because of scheduling conflicts with his film The Revenant. Then Jake Gyllenhaal, who worked with Ayer on End of Watch, was given an offer to replace Hardy as Flag, but he declined. Kinnaman then beat Joel Edgerton and Jon Bernthal to play the role.

5. When the first batch of cast members was announced, Viola Davis hadn't been confirmed as Amanda Waller, rather it was reported that Warner Bros. were trying to cast Oprah Winfrey for the role!

6. One of the more controversial castings among the Suicide Squad was that of the Joker, as played here by Jared Leto. Ryan Gosling was originally offered the part but was said to have bulked at the multi-picture deal Warner Bros insisted he sign. When Leto came on board as the psychopathic crime boss and nemesis of Batman, he became heavily involved in every aspect of the character's appearance and portrayal, and went deep into method acting, spending his time alone both on-set and off, listening to gospel music from the 1920s and reading literature on shamanism.

Leto told Empire Magazine...

"I took a pretty deep dive. But this was a unique opportunity and I couldn't imagine doing it another way. It was fun, playing these psychological games. But at the same time it was very painful."

Leto never once broke character during the production and, as Margot Robbie revealed at San Diego Comic-Con International 2016, although all the cast members of the Suicide Squad had extensive rehearsals together, she and Jared Leto did not rehearse any scenes prior to filming together. Director David Ayer felt it added to the unpredictability and madness of Harley Quinn and The Joker.

7. Principal photography began in Toronto, Ontario on April 13, 2015, with additional filming in Chicago, and ended in August that year. However, after the critical response to the previous DCEU movie, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Warner's ordered extensive reshoots in an effort to make the film more lighthearted and in a comedic tone. It was reported the reshoots cost as much as $22 million (more than the typical $6–10 million that additional filming costs), pushing the filming budget to $175 million.

8. After filming wrapped, the majority of the cast and crew got the tattoo "SKWAD" in honor of the film. The tattoos were even applied by some of the cast members inclusing Margot Robbie & Will Smith.

9. Although Margot Robbie's performance as Harley Quinn was well received, when Suicide Squad premiered in August 2016 the critical response was not kind. "Muddled plot", "Thinly written characters", "Choppy directing" were just some of the choice phrases used in reviews. However, the film went on to be a box office success, grossing $325.1 million in the United States and Canada and $421.7 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $746.8 million! That's almost $100 million more than Man of Steel, and just $100 million less than Dawn of Justice, both of which had substantially bigger filming budgets. Dollar for dollar, Suicide Squad came out the most profitable of the three.

10. Following the successful #ReleaseTheSnyderCut movement campaign for Zack Snyder's Justice League, fans of Suicide Squad have adopted the mantle #ReleaseTheAyerCut, which director and writer David Ayer supported.

In a July 2020 interview, Ayer stated how his vision was changed due to the success of Deadpool and the negative criticism received by Snyder's Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, highlighting an early trailer that "nailed the tone and intention of the film [he] made", saying that his "soulful drama was beaten into a 'comedy'". You can compare the shift in tone in the trailer's reel below...



Ayer also confirmed that a director's cut for Suicide Squad "definitely exists" and hoped the fan movement would put pressure on it seeing the light of day. As for what it would include differently, Ben Affleck's stunt double Richard Cetrone said the film would feature "more Batman", and there'd apparently be more Joker too. Which would hopefully placate the upset Jared Leto felt when almost all of his scenes were omitted from the final cut.