It’s safe to say that most comic-book fans were a little disappointed when Tom Hardy vacated the role of Rick Flagg in David Ayer’s upcoming Suicide Squad, with the part eventually going to RoboCop star Joel Kinnaman. Now, the actor has shed some light on exactly why he won’t be living it up with the likes of Deadshot (Will Smith), Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) and the Joker (Jared Leto). In an interview with Collider’s Steve Weintraub, Hardy says another promising project is to blame.
Speaking at the Mad Max: Fury Road press day, the actor expressed a great deal of regret at not getting a chance to embody Flagg on the big screen:
“Warner Bros. is my home studio and I love them so I was really bummed out. I wanted to work on that and I know the script is really fucking alley and I also know what’s gonna happen with The Joker and Harley Quinn in that; I won’t give away too much…it’s fucking alley. And that whole territory is something that I would certainly—I mean, everybody loves The Joker. Everybody loves The Joker. Will Smith is a dope guy, but everybody loves The Joker and that’s gonna, I think, be a very important film for fans.”
Evidently, Hardy didn’t drop out because he wasn’t thrilled with the project, as some outlets reported a while back. Instead, the star had to turn down the gig because Alejando G. Inarritu was forced to expand the amount of time spent shooting his upcoming The Revenant by a whopping three months:
“There’s a very practical element as to why I’ve missed out on that foray, which is because Alejandro [G. Inarritu] has overshot by three months in Calgary, so we’ve got to go back out to Patagonia or Alaska to continue shooting The Revenant which has turned into a much bigger beast than we thought, but that also looks exceptional.”
Weather issues delayed the production so much that the 1880s-set revenge drama, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a fur trapper left for dead by his traitorous companion (Hardy) after he’s mauled by a bear deep in the wilderness, is on break until this summer, when it will again roll cameras and (hopefully) finish in time for its planned release this December. As such, Hardy really had no choice but to give up on Suicide Squad:
“Literally we wrapped in Calgary for now until we go back in July. It would have smashed the two, I would’ve had a beard. It was just not gonna happen so I got ass-slammed technically out of Suicide Squad, gutted, so I had to hand it over to Joel Kinnaman, who will do an amazing job. It’s just I got bumped out, and that’s cool that’s the way it is.”
Obviously, both Hardy and comic-book fans are a bit saddened by the way things turned out, but with The Revenant sounding as promising as it does, and Suicide Squad still looking mighty exactly, it’s not exactly a lose-lose scenario for filmgoers.
