Remember back in August when we reported on the rumor that Warner Brothers was interested in going into the James Gunn business after his divorce from Disney was final? And remember how I speculated that if this was true, that Warners would want him for one of their DC Comics films? It looks like both things were right.
The Wrap is quoting three sources that say Warner Brothers is in talks with Gunn to write Suicide Squad 2 for the studio, with an eye on having him direct the film too.
Warner Brothers was pushing for a light tone for the property, so much so that they add reshoots to add more humor to the first film and even reportedly briefly locked director David Ayer out of the editing room when he wasn’t delivering a light enough film for the studio’s liking.
That experience killed any chance of Ayer directing the sequel, and the studio looked towards Mel Gibson, Daniel Espinoza and Jaume Collet-Serra to direct before settling on Gavin O’Connor for the job.That article said that O’Connor had yet to sign at press time, so maybe that deal fell through.
Gunn would be at the very least the third writer on the project, following in the footsteps of Adam Cozad and the writing team of David Bar Katz and Todd Stashwick.
On paper, this seems to be a great fit. Guardians of the Galaxy and Suicide Squad do have their similarities in that they are teams of bad people who do the right thing on occasion. Gunn has shown he can pull that off very well, while still having the audiences invest in the characters. But there is still a lot of animosity out there aimed at Gunn, and not exclusively from right-wing accused rapist conspiracy theorists. As you can see in the two paragraphs above, Warners hasn’t been all that good about sticking with a direction for the film. It remains to be seen if this rumor at all pans out.
