Zack Snyder may have been given the chance to return to Justice League, but Warner Bros. boss Ann Sarnoff hasn't been swayed by the #ReleaseTheAyerCut campaign, and has made it very clear that she doesn't plan on affording David Ayer the same opportunity to show the world his original take on Suicide Squad.
The director has always maintained that his original vision for Task Force X was very different to the movie WB released to theaters, and recently stated that he made "an amazing movie" that "just scared the s--- out of the executives." Now, editor David Hickman has weighed in, confirming that the studio "wanted to take things in a different direction."
"[Ayer’s] was a much darker film," Hickman tells CinemaBlend. "It was almost like a Black Hawk Down type thing. It was just very militarized, very serious. I mean, of course there were supposed to be comedic moments with Will Smith, but it was a darker film."
Ayer previously revealed that Jared Leto's Joker originally had a much bigger part to play, and Hickman backs that up - though it doesn't sound like Warner Bros. execs were the only ones unsure of how to utilise the character. "[He] did a really good job... we just couldn't find a purpose for it because sometimes he would just go off on such crazy, insane tangents and it would be really hard to weave it into the film."
Ayer's original version of Suicide Squad being released remains an unlikely prospect, but we said the same thing about the "Snyder Cut" for years, so you never know. For now, we can look forward to James Gunn's soft reboot, The Suicide Squad, this August.
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Mark Cassidy is a writer, photographer, amateur filmmaker, and Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic from Dublin, Ireland.