Superman was almost the villain in ‘The Suicide Squad’, James Gunn reveals
The movie was well-received by fans and critics alike. Still, the movie opened with low numbers at the box office
James Gunn almost set the Suicide Squad gang against Superman.
Gunn revealed in a new interview with Script Apart, that there was a ”time when I thought The Suicide Squad should fight Superman.”
Rather than choosing him as the movie antagonist, Gunn opted for Starro against the gang of dangerous supervillains.
“He’s a character I love from the comics,” he explained. “I think he’s a perfect comic book character because he’s absolutely ludicrous but also very scary in his own way. What he does is scary.”
“He used to scare the crap out of me when I was a child, putting those facehuggers on Superman and Batman. So I thought he was one of the major, major DC villains that was probably never going to be put into another movie. And if they did, it’d have been a ‘black cloud’ version of Starro. Not a giant walking starfish, a kaiju that’s bright pink and cerulean blue, this ridiculously big, bright bad guy.”
The filmmaker also noted how Superman’s position in the DC Extended Universe impacted his final decision. “At the time, there were a lot of questions like, ‘Who is Superman in the DCEU? Is this movie outside the DCEU?’, and I just didn’t want to deal with it all that much.” He added.
The movie was well-received by fans and critics alike. Still, the movie did open with low numbers at the box office with a $26.5 million debut in North American theatres. It was very low in comparison to the original ‘Suicide Squad’, which debuted at $133.6 million.
The movie was released on August 5 and features Margot Robbie, Idris Elba, John Cena, Joel Kinnaman, Sylvester Stallone, Viola Davis, Jai Courtney and Peter Capaldi. The movie follows a group of convicted felons who are on their path to demolishing a Nazi-era laboratory. Along the way, they encounter a giant alien named Starro.
