After what amounted to a bit of an extensive search over the past month, the trades are now reporting that Joel Kinnaman has replaced Tom Hardy in Suicide Squad. The RoboCop and The Killing star will play Rick Flag, the leader of the titular supervillain team working for Viola Davis’ Amanda Waller.
Hardy exited the highly-anticipated project last month due to scheduling conflicts with his next project, Birdman director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s The Revenant, as well as promotional obligations for Mad Max: Fury Road. After he vacated the role, rumors began to swirl that Jake Gyllenhaal, Jon Bernthal and Joel Edgerton were in contention.
Kinnaman may not be as big a star as someone like Hardy or Gyllenhaal, but I think he’s a great choice for Rick Flag. He displayed a tremendous amount of range in The Killing, and proved that he could handle a leading role in last year’s RoboCop. I’m excited to see what he brings to a film like Suicide Squad, which will require him to share the screen and command quite a few iconic and powerful characters.
Directed by David Ayer, Suicide Squad is scheduled to blast into theaters on August 5th, 2016, and aside from Kinnaman, stars Will Smith as Deadshot, Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, Jared Leto as the Joker, Jai Courtney as Boomerang, Cara Delevingne as Enchantress, Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor and Viola Davis as Amanda Waller.
