David Ayer

Pretty much everything about David Ayer’s new Netflix movie Bright causes one to tilt one’s head to the side while squinting one’s eyes and making a noncommittal “huh” sound. It seems like the kind of story that would feel more at home in the early 2000s gritty teen urban fantasy era when authors like Holly Black and Cassandra Clare were in their heyday. But Ayer, never one to realize when material seems dated (see: the extremely Hot Topic aesthetic of Suicide Squad), is going full out with Bright, and a new image of Edgar Ramirez’ rather flamboyant elf character.

From the moment a Gotham City Sirens movie was announced, the fancasting begun in earnest. A live-action Catwoman, Harley Quinn, and Poison Ivy team-up is so exciting we can’t even stand it — especially for us ladies, who have yet to see a female-led superhero movie on the big screen post-Iron Man. (No, Jupiter Ascending doesn’t count.) When it was announced on Wednesday that David Ayer would be directing the film and that it was being fast-tracked at Warner Bros., it wasn’t long until the first cast rumor took root and started blooming: Megan Fox could be our Poison Ivy.

Despite some of its more…divisive…aspects, there was at least one part of Suicide Squad that most people could agree on: Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn was pretty great. And it seems that, for as much fun as we had watching her on screen as the Joker’s occasional partner in crime, Robbie had just as much, as not long after the film hit theaters, it was reported that the actress was spearheading a spinoff featuring Harley and a handful of female DC villains. That project is called Gotham City Sirens, and it just took one big step closer to the big screen, with David Ayer signing on to direct.

Once in the Suicide Squad, always in the Suicide Squad, at least if you’re Will Smith and his co-star Ike Barinholtz, who has just joined Smith and Joel Edgerton in David Ayer’s Netflix orc buddy cop movie Bright. Which is a very weird second half of a sentence to type.

Well, we were all clamoring for it. Or, somebody was. Regardless, there’s an extended cut Blu-ray of Suicide Squad coming out, with many more minutes featuring the antics of the Worst. Superheroes. Ever. Warner Bros. just released a trailer for the upcoming release, with a few shots we haven’t seen before in other trailers or the movie itself.

It looks like David Ayer changed his mind; we’re getting an Extended Cut of ‘Suicide Squad’ after all.

In a really fascinating profile published by Variety today, actor and occasional performance artist Shia LaBeouf addresses a few of the more controversial aspects of his career (his arrest, drinking problems, etc.) and discusses working with some of the biggest directors in Hollywood (Michael Bay, Steven Spielberg). But one of the most intriguing revelations from the article is that LaBeouf almost starred in Suicide Squad — until the studio (and some script changes) got in the way.

Suicide Squad has only been in theaters for a week, but it’s already become a flashpoint for fan discussion. (And yes, that was a DC pun, thank you very much.) Does the movie’s plot make sense? Does it matter? How much of David Ayer’s original vision wound up in the theatrical cut? And maybe the most contentious debate of all: Is the movie better than Warner Bros.’ previous entry in the DC Extended Universe, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice?

Movie fans will recognize Ninja and Yolandi Visser — collectively known as the group Die Antwoord — as the human stars of Chappie, Neill Blomkamp’s RoboCop/Short Circuit hybrid about a dystopian future where a police robot gains sentience and starts talking like Sharlto Copley. According to Die Antwoord, though, movie fans should also recognize them as the people who inspired the look of Suicide Squad, currently the biggest movie in America, shattering box office records left and right, even though they didn’t get any kind of credit or compensation.

By all accounts, a lot of stuff got cut out of Suicide Squad. If you believe the recent press reports, there were two totally different versions of the film competing for release: A darker take from director David Ayer, and a jokier movie edited in consultation with the company that made the film’s popular, upbeat trailers.