You have to spare a thought for poor David Ayer after the filmmaker’s entry into the world of big budget studio movies didn’t exactly go to plan. Having cut his teeth on a number of gritty street level thrillers, the End of Watch and Street Kings director seemed like a solid choice to tackle the DCEU’s Suicide Squad, in what was promised to be an altogether different type of comic book flick than audiences were used to seeing.
However, Warner Bros. quickly inserted themselves into the production, and Ayer hasn’t been shy in admitting that the version of the antihero ensemble piece that landed in theaters bore very little resemblance to the movie that he’d initially signed on to make. The 52 year-old has been very vocal about how Suicide Squad was taken out of his hands, and in a recent social media exchange, he admitted that he’s felt guilty about it for years, which you can check out below.
I took the hits like a good soldier when the studio cut hit the streets. It’s who I am.
I watched my cut for the first time since it was abandoned.
It is f*cking amazing. On God.I felt guilty for years like I f*cked. Nope. It’s fire. It’s the tone of the Comicon trailer 100% https://t.co/sFlFiGW5yN
— David Ayer (@DavidAyerMovies) October 17, 2020
A couple of months back, there was momentum gathering behind the Ayer Cut, with fans hoping to pull the same trick with Suicide Squad that eventually led to Zack Snyder being handed the keys and a hefty stack of cash to finally put the finishing touches to his original cut of Justice League. However, despite the filmmaker constantly teasing how vastly superior his take on the material was, as well as releasing countless previously unseen images, the talk has faded into the background.
A lot of that surely has to do with the wildly enthusiastic response to the sizzle reel for James Gunn’s soft reboot that debuted at DC FanDome. Not to mention that the studio probably aren’t worrying about returning to the well and spending money on a better version of Suicide Squad when they clearly believe that there’s one already in the works and heading to theaters next summer.