WTF Happened To This Movie? – The JoBlo series that looks at troubled productions, curious creative decisions, box-office failures, surprising successes, and cult favorites! As the DC Extended Universe was just starting to try and reproduce Marvel’s monumental box office success, WB chose Suicide Squad (2016) to immediately follow the world-building of Zack Snyder’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. David Ayer (Training Day, End of Watch) would put this ragtag team of DC Comics supervillains into action, but the studio’s disappointment in Batman v Superman and competing creative priorities ultimately made a mess of the end result.
All kinds of stories came from the set, such as Jared Leto’s antics as The Joker alienating cast members, reshoots and re-edits to get the film more in line with the popular teaser trailer and more. When it finally hit theatres, critics and fans were savage, although the film still grossed an excellent $746 million worldwide, even if this was less than what WB may have been hoping for. When a sequel was greenlit, they decided to essentially reboot the film, with James Gunn signing on for the radically different The Suicide Squad, which critics and audiences are loving. David Ayer’s Suicide Squad 2016 has seemingly been ignored in favor of this fresh new take, but is the original movie all that bad?
With the release of Zack Snyder’s radically different, expanded cut of Justice League, many DC fans have been clamoring for the release of David Ayer’s cut of Suicide Squad. The #ReleaseTheAyerCut movement is gaining momentum on Twitter. Stars of both the original film and James Gunn’s well-received sequel, The Suicide Squad (read our review), are joining the chorus. But what would the new Suicide Squad Ayer cut be like? Spend some time with the bad guys and find out that and more on “WTF Happened to SUICIDE SQUAD!”