The Suicide Squad director James Gunn said Warner Bros. gave him free rein to decide which characters lived and which died.
Gunn spoke to Total Film for their cover story on The Suicide Squad and was asked just how strict the studio was when it came to killing off DC characters. "They said I could keep [all the characters] or do away with them all," Gunn said. "I could do a completely new squad – which I considered – and they said, 'You can kill anyone.' [Warner Bros. was] 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 percent – there's no one to blame if something goes wrong, except for myself!" Gunn said.
That trust began early on, following Gunn being fired from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (only to be reinstated eventually). The studio immediately tried to scoop up the writer and director, offering him any project he wanted—including a Superman film.
"Warner came a-calling pretty immediately upon the news," Gunn said of his notorious firing following the surfacing of offensive tweets from years prior. "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," Gunn said of how he ultimately decided on Suicide Squad over Superman. "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."
Written and directed by James Gunn, The Suicide Squad stars Viola Davis as Amanda Waller, Joel Kinnaman as Rick Flag, Michael Rooker as Savant, Flula Borg as Javelin, David Dastmalchian as Polka-Dot Man, Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, Daniela Melchior as Ratcatcher 2, Idris Elba as Bloodsport, Mayling NG as Mongal, Peter Capaldi as The Thinker, Alice Braga as Solsoria, Sylvester Stallone as King Shark, Pete Davidson as Blackguard, Nathan Fillion as TDK, Sean Gunn as Weasel, Jai Courtney as Captain Boomerang, John Cena as Peacemaker, with Steve Agee, Taika Waititi and Storm Reid. The film arrives in theaters and on HBO Max Aug. 6.
Source: Total Film (via GamesRadar)