With James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad beginning its international rollout this weekend, filmmaker David Ayer has taken to social media to release a lengthy statement – apparently his final word – on 2016’s original Suicide Squad.
Ayer reiterates his past comments that he believes he “made something amazing” with the film before Warner Bros. hacked up his cut for the theatrically-released version, before closing out by sharing his support for James Gunn and the cast and crew of the new movie and stating that he “will no longer speak publicly” about the 2016 film.
“I put my life into Suicide Squad,” states Ayer. “I made something amazing – My cut is [an] intricate and emotional journey with some ‘bad people’ who are shit on and discarded (a theme that resonates in my soul). The studio cut is not my movie. Read that again.”
“And my cut is not the 10 week director’s cut – it’s a fully mature edit by Lee Smith standing on the incredible work by John Gilroy,” he continued. “It’s all Steven Price’s brilliant score, with not a single radio song in the whole thing. It has traditional character arcs, amazing performances, a solid third-act resolution. A handful of people have seen it.”
You can read Ayer’s full statement via his Twitter here…
My turn… https://t.co/E5uumAwvdp pic.twitter.com/ckr9kzeGFD
— David Ayer (@DavidAyerMovies) July 29, 2021
Although Ayer has previously spearheaded a fan campaign lobbying Warner Bros. and/or HBO Max to make his version of Suicide Squad available a la Zack Snyder’s Justice League, that prospect was shot down by WarnerMedia CEO Ann Sarnoff earlier this year when she confirmed that “we won’t be developing David Ayer’s cut”. So, at this point, it seems we’ll just have to take Ayer’s word that it’s amazing and hope perhaps that a change of heart at Warner Bros. might allow us to see for ourselves at some point in the future.
Suicide Squad saw David Ayer (Fury) directing a cast that included Will Smith (Focus) as Deadshot, Jared Leto (Dallas Buyers Club) as The Joker, Margot Robbie (The Wolf of Wall Street) as Harley Quinn, Jai Courtney (Terminator Genisys) as Captain Boomerang, Joel Kinnaman (RoboCop) as Rick Flag, Viola Davis (The Help) as Amanda Waller, Cara Delevingne (Paper Towns) as Enchantress, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (Thor: The Dark World) as Killer Croc, Jay Hernandez (Hostel) as El Diablo, Adam Beach (Flags of Our Fathers) as Slipknot, Jim Parrack (Fury) as Johnny Frost, Ben Affleck (Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice) as Batman, newcomer Karen Fukuhara as Katana, Common (Selma) as Monster T, Ike Barinholtz (The Mindy Project) as Captain Griggs and Scott Eastwood (The Longest Ride) as Lieutenant ‘GQ’ Edwards.
