The Suicide Squad is the next film on the DC slate, meaning we’ll be getting more and more DC related articles in the coming months.
James Gunn, director of both Guardians of the Galaxy, is directing the film. He was fired from Disney for decade old tweets, which lead to his hiring at DC.
DC offered him two special treats. He could pick basically any DC property he wanted. And, after picking The Suicide Squad he was told he could kill off any characters he chose. Including Harley Quinn.
James Gunn told Total Film:
Warner came a-calling pretty immediately upon the news. I think everything kind of went down [with Disney] on like a Friday, and I think by Monday, Warners were trying to get a hold of me to talk to me about Superman and a bunch of other stuff. But it took me a little while to decide what I was going to do – I really just needed to take care of myself from an emotional and spiritual place.
Before agreeing to anything, I took the three ideas that excited me the most. Two were actually DC projects, and then the other one was an original idea. For about a month, every other day I worked on one of those projects, trying to see where the ideas would go. The Suicide Squad really did seem the thing that excited me the most. That’s when I went and told DC – because they’d offered me basically anything [I wanted to make] – that the one I wanted to do was The Suicide Squad.
RELATED: Michael Keaton Confirmed As The Flash Begins Filming
This is pretty incredible news. It’s no surprise Gunn would want to make a movie about a group of DC villains/outcasts. It’s kind of already in his wheelhouse. What does shock me is that he wanted to do a franchise that already came with the stench of past failure.
Gunn also confirmed DC gave him their blessing to kill any DC character in the film, even Harley Quinn.
They said I could keep [all the characters] or do away with them all. I could do a completely new squad – which I considered – and they said, ‘You can kill anyone.’ Warner were pretty much on board [with the story] from the beginning – it was pretty much firmly in place from the inception of me taking on the project. They were very trusting of me throughout the entire process, almost to the degree to which I was frightened, because it really is all me, 100 per cent – there’s no one to blame if something goes wrong, except for myself!
