James Gunn originally wanted The Suicide Squad to fight Superman

The Suicide Squad has now been unleashed. As we know, Task Force X found themselves going up against Starro the Conquerer, who is definitely an iconic DC villain, but one who most fans never expected to see on the big screen. Although writer/director James Gunn was able to bring the giant walking starfish to life successfully, he did once consider pitting the squad against someone DC fans are very familiar with – Superman.

While speaking on the Script Apart podcast, James Gunn revealed that there “was a time when I thought that The Suicide Squad should fight Superman.” It was early days on the project when the notion of Superman was first brought up but Gunn said that it didn’t take him long to scrap the idea. “At the time, there were a lot of questions about, ‘Who is Superman in the DCEU? Is this movie outside the DCEU?,’ and all that stuff that I didn’t really want to deal with that much,” Gunn said. “I just wanted to tell a good story.” While the thought of The Suicide Squad facing off against Superman is certainly appealing, Starro wound up being a much better fit. James Gunn also knew that Warner Bros. weren’t likely to use Starro in another movie, so if anyone was going to bring the villain to the big screen, it had to be him.

He’s a character I love from the comics. I think he’s a perfect comic book character because he’s absolutely ludicrous but he’s also very scary in his own way. What he does is scary. He used to scare the crap out of me when I was a child, putting those face-huggers on Superman and Batman and stuff. So I thought he was one of the major, major DC villains that was probably never going to be put into another movie. And if they did, they would do it like, the black cloud version of Starro. Not a giant walking starfish, a kaiju that is bright pink and cerulean blue, just ridiculously big, bright bad guy.

The Suicide Squad is now playing in theaters and streaming on HBO Max. Be sure to check out a review from our own JimmyO and let us know what you thought of the film as well.