couple of weeks ago I spoke with an excellent source who told me something surprising: the trailer for Suicide Squad, the one with the Queen song, did not represent the film as it then existed. “Every joke in the movie is in that trailer,” this source told me. The enormous positive response to the trailer led to Warner Bros requesting reshoots that would alter the tone of the film, bringing in some more of the lightness to which audiences responded.
I have since spoken to more sources and I understand that the reshoots are happening right now, as recently as this week, and that they’re big - tens of millions of dollars big. And they’re adding more humor and lightness into the film.
Reshoots and additional scenes are part and parcel of big-budget films nowadays. They’re literally part of the initial budget on some movies. The fact that Suicide Squad has reshoots “tens of millions of dollars big” doesn’t really indicate anything.
I have a lot of doubt that the basic tone of a movie would be changed through reshoots, especially after a trailer release. Sometimes a film is re-cut into something very different, or the studio demands huge changes (Fant4stic) but you normally hear about it long before this point.
Regardless of whether or not Faraci is right about this, a movie lighter than BvS is just fine in my book.
First of all, there certainly will be a notable drop off. Secondly, BvS cost $200m more to make than Deadpool and also definitely had far, far bigger marketing spend on top.
My brother-in-law was going all in on the “philosophical underpinnings” of BvS over the Easter holiday; being a philosophy major, you know. Of course now he’s just a 50’s style salesman on the “ups” with tech companies. He thought BvS was all deep thoughts by Jack Handy. /shrug.
I still think the critical reception makes it a scary thing to replicate though. It almost looks like it’s the marketing that’s pushing those numbers rather than the movie itself. If you’re a suit you could easily see pitches being made now like “BvS marketing + Deadpool style!”.
According to Box Office Mojo, Deadpool cost 1/5 of BvS (58M to 250M). That presumably holds true through the marketing budget, as well. Opening weekends for each were 132M and 166M, domestic. I’d be surprised if BvS has longer legs at the box office than Deadpool.
Been known since they originally filmed it. My guess is after the complaints about BvS with “Batfleck” being considered a positive they wanted to get some shots in this trailer to let people know “The good thing from BvS? He’s in this movie too guys!”
I liked that trailer best of all, I finally feel like I get what they’re going for, why the Suicide Squad even exists. Not what they’re doing necessarily, but I dig the Dirty Dozen vibe, and the “plausible deniability” thing at least makes sense here. I get that these are existing comic characters that I’m mostly unfamiliar with - sure, Harley and Croc are pretty obvious. And from doing a little more digging I see Will Smith will be Deadshot, but maybe not Floyd Lawton? Or just a different take. (Thank you, Arkham Asylum/City/Knight!) But I have to admit, throwing in a little Batman might be the thing that tips it over into “hey maybe I do actually need to check this out” territory.
Warner Bros. seems pretty confident about Margot Robbie’s portrayal of Harley.
Margot Robbie, who stars as the villainess in Suicide Squad, is attached to reprise the character and would also produce the untitled spinoff, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.
But in an interesting twist, the project is not a Quinn solo movie. Rather, it would focus on several of DC’s female heroes and villains.
Details are being closely guarded but names such as Batgirl and Birds of Prey have surfaced, although in what capacity, it’s not clear. Warner Bros. isn’t commenting.
The character has some similarities to Marvel’s Deadpool in that they both break the fourth wall and have nihilistic streaks, with their stories being wacky fun.
Which is a surprise to exactly no one.
The odds of it not being a Dini Harley movie greatly lowers my interest.
You have reviews like ScreenCrush, which goes in hard.
[quote]
Instead of just one scene of plot-stopping fan service, Suicide Squad delivers an entire first act of soul-deadening exposition. The movie spends 20 story-free minutes with a Machiavellian bureaucrat while she sits in a restaurant discussing a top secret personnel file. Here is Deadshot, the world’s greatest assassin; this is Harley Quinn, the Joker’s psychotic girlfriend. Oh and have you heard about Captain Boomerang? And on and on and on.
Director David Ayer tries to liven things up with a couple of flashy DC cameos and lots of iconic rock songs on the soundtrack. But that’s just the proverbial lipstick on the dead pig that Jared Leto sent to his co-stars to prove his Method bona fides as the Joker. This opening sequence has all the excitement of a mildly contentious HR meeting, and the movie gets no better from there. Bland, boring, and sometimes borderline incoherent, Suicide Squad is a disappointing disaster.[/quote]
[quote]
Like The Dirty Dozen for the Hot Topic generation, the team gets in-your-face introductions and things just grow more mental from there. But compared to its ilk, Suicide Squad is an excellently quirky, proudly raised middle finger to the staid superhero-movie establishment.[/quote]
