It sounds like last year's whisperings of James Gunn steering the DC ship for the next take on Suicide Squad were true.
Thursday, Deadline—who first reported back in October that Gunn was in talks to maybe sign on as writer/director—said that the film has now been scheduled by the studio for an Aug. 6, 2021 release date. The latest, per this new report, is that this Suicide Squad will actually be a full-on reboot with "new actors and characters" and not a sequel to David Ayer's 2016 film.
Gunn—whose credits include Slither, Super, and most recently the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise—was ditched by Disney last year after far right conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich recirculated old tweets from Gunn including jokes about pedophilia. Disney's firing of Gunn, who was originally set to direct the upcoming Guardians Vol. 3, was strongly criticized by others in the industry including comedian Patton Oswalt.
"This is one of the less disgusting tweets from Mike Cernovich, the dude who, after running a Gamergate-style smear campaign, just got James Gunn fired from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3," Oswalt said in July when directing Twitter followers to an old tweet from Cernovich.
Ayer's Suicide Squad, while a box office success, was largely panned by critics. The upcoming Harley Quinn-centered Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn, however, has all the right ingredients to be an instaclassic. Birds of Prey writer Christina Hodson, after all, is the same voice behind last year's franchise-improving Transformers entry Bumblebee.
