2016’s Suicide Squad director David Ayer says there have been no further discussions with Warner Bros. and DC Studios about releasing his director’s cut.
“Look, I can take the hint. It’s been radio silent, and I’m done pushing a rock uphill,” Ayer said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter while promoting his latest release, The Beekeeper. “I love directing, I love my job, I love working with actors. There are great places and great partners out there to work with, and I just want to focus on being a great partner and making some good movies.”
Ayer’s Suicide Squad was the third installment of the DC Extended Universe franchise following the events of 2013’s Man of Steel and 2016’s Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. The movie was approached as a dark, Dirty Dozen-style action movie led by Will Smith’s Deadshot and Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn as well as the first appearance of Jared Leto‘s Joker. When test audiences reacted unfavorably to Batman v. Superman’s deconstructionist take on the iconic Justice League characters, Warner Bros. ordered reshoots to remove Ayer’s “somber” tone in favor of an action comedy in the style of Guardians of the Galaxy.
The #ReleaseTheAyerCut campaign
In the years since Suicide Squad’s release, Ayer expressed optimism about releasing his intended cut of the movie after the #ReleaseTheSnyderCut campaign resulted in Zack Snyder’s Justice League seeing the light of day on HBO Max. In August 2023, the director teased DC fans by responding to a repost of Leto’s first photo as the Joker in a tuxedo to commemorate Suicide Squad’s theatrical release. With the change in leadership at DC Studios under Peter Safran and James Gunn, however, the shift in direction for the DC brand appears to look ahead to the DCU’s new slate beginning with Gunn’s Superman: Legacy rather than revisiting the past.
As Ayer prepares to move on from his push to get his director’s cut seen, the director believes the Suicide Squad experience will be a permanent mark on his career.
“The studio has gone through several iterations of leadership, and nobody involved ever had any malice or ill will or anything. Everyone just wanted the same result, which was a great commercial movie,” Ayer said.
He added, “There was just a big delta on what that was. The thing that’s been difficult for me is that I made a great film. I made a great film. The people who have seen my cut have pretty much unanimously said that it’s one of the best comic book movies ever made. If someone who’s seen the cut wants to dispute that, then they can come talk to me. I was pilloried in the media again and again over it, and then pilloried again and again in the press launch of subsequent IPs, but I kept my mouth shut for years. I learned that nature abhors a vacuum, and if you don’t tell your story, then somebody else will. It’s incredibly unjust, and I can’t point to a similar situation, ever. It’s mind-blowing. It’s a scar, it’s a wound and it’s taken a lot out of me. It also took a lot of equity out of my career, unfairly.”
