Gavin O'Connor explains why his take on Suicide Squad was scrapped

[The Laughing Fish]

With Gavin O'Connor's "Warrior" recently celebrating its tenth anniversary, we recently sat down for an interview on The Playlist Podcast to talk about the writer-directors standout sports drama. And while the focus was on "Warrior" and its potential television spinoff, the conversation did turn to past and future projects: including a discarded adaptation of "Suicide Squad" and an upcoming drama with O'Connor's "Mare of Easttown" collaborator.

Before James Gunn was attached to direct the sequel-slash-reboot of David Ayer's 2016 film, O'Connor had been asked to write a script for a "Suicide Squad" movie. Originally, the studio had wanted something a little darker in tone, and O'Connor had been tasked with creating something serious. "What happened there was I wrote a deal to write a script, and they knew what I was writing. At that level, with those kinds of movies, with that budget, no one's just going off and writing something without walking them through what the movie's gonna be," the director explained. "And everyone was cool with it."

But when O'Connor was in the final stages of the scriptwriting process, there was a regime change at DC Films, and suddenly the studio was asking him for a distinctly different take than the one he was writing. "What happened was during the latter part of writing the script there was a whole regime change at DC, and when that happened, they wanted it to be a comedy," he recalled. "And I'm like, 'i'm not writing a comedy.' I mean, It [was] fun, but it's not a yuk-fest. And the new regime wanted a different movie than I was writing."

Asked if he's seen the new "The Suicide Squad" movie by James Gunn or has any other comic-book characters in mind, the answer was a firm no. "I have no interest [to see it], to be honest," he said, and as for additional comic book movies, he said, "I'm just doing my own thing."

https://web.archive.org/web/20210912141652/https://theplaylist.net/gavin-oconnor-suicide-sq-20210912/

It seems Geoff Johns was partly responsible for another DC movie casualty.

O'Connor directed some damn good films such as Warrior and The Way Back, I would've loved have to seen his take on Task Force X. Instead, Toxic WB had to continue copying that Deadpool-esque comedy template, and as a result, Suicide Squad as a box office name is in ruins and its future as a franchise is arguably in limbo.

Joe Manganiello revealed O'Connor was out of five different ideas for a sequel to the first Suicide Squad from 2016. Another idea would've included Manganiello's Deathstroke take on Will Smith's Deadshot. That would've been awesome.

https://web.archive.org/web/20210311155605/https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/joe-manganiello-deathstroke-suicide-squad-sequel
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/03/ray-fisher-justice-league-joe-manganiello-batman-deathstroke-cyborg

Ayer cut and a Gavin O'Connor-directed sequel would've been a far greater alternative to what we have at the moment.