GUNN CRAZY

THE SUPERVILLAINS OF THE SUICIDE SQUAD HAVE BEEN DISPATCHED ON ANOTHER OFF-THE-BOOKS MISSION, BUT THIS TIME THEY’VE BROUGHT A “DOUCHEY CAPTAIN AMERICA”, A TALKING SHARK AND THE DIRECTOR OF GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY ALONG FOR THE RIDE. TOTAL FILM MEETS JAMES GUNN AND THE CAST OF THE WILDEST COMIC-BOOK MOVIE OF 2021…

n hindsight, Amanda Waller should have had James Gunn’s number on speed dial from day one.

After all, any government official responsible for sending groups of supervillains on secret missions is going to appreciate a few pointers from the director of Marvel’s Guardians Of The Galaxy movies – when it comes to moulding groups of comic-book A-holes into unlikely heroes, nobody does it better than Gunn.

Which is why, for the Suicide Squad’s second big-screen outing, DC Comics and Warner Bros gave Gunn a call. The resulting follow-up promises to be very different to David Ayer’s 2016 movie, as the incoming writer/director throws his trademark brand of humour and appreciation for C-list comic-book characters into the mix – along with a walking, talking shark who sounds like Sylvester Stallone.

Once again, the most-wanted inmates of Belle Reve prison will be sent on a one-way, off-the-books mission – in this case to the fictional South American dictatorship of Corto Maltese – but this time it’ll have the feel of a 1970s war movie. And while some members of the new-look Task Force X, such as Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn, look rather familiar, many of the newcomers would only be picked from a police line-up by someone who’d chosen DC comics as their specialist subject on Mastermind. In other words, don’t call this follow-up – known simply as The Suicide Squad – a reboot or a sequel. According to the team, it’s very much its own thing.

“This is the Suicide Squad through the vision of James Gunn,” producer Peter Safran tells Total Film. “It’s very much The Dirty Dozen meets Guardians Of The Galaxy. The reason that the studio was so keen to do this with James is to get that great