It’s common knowledge that 2016’s Suicide Squad ended up as a very different movie than its director, David Ayer, intended. After the poor critical reception of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Warner Bros. executives panicked and mandated heavy reshoots, alterations to the plot, left a lot of shot footage on the cutting room floor, and effectively took the final cut out of Ayer’s hands.
Now Ayer has addressed one specific element of this production chaos. The DCEU was planned to emulate the interconnected stories of the MCU, with Suicide Squad once intended to pave the way for Justice League. In Ayer’s version, the villain Enchantress was under the control of a Mother Box and she would have been laying the ground for Steppenwolf’s appearance in the next DCEU movie.
Now, as per Ayer, he had to “adjust fast” to being ordered to strip this out of the movie:
Zack Snyder’s Justice League eventually arrived and was unambiguously an improvement on the terrible theatrical cut, so could ‘David Ayer’s Suicide Squad’ also be in with a chance of release? Hopes were recently raised after reports that James Gunn was planning to officially release “The Ayer Cut.” Sadly, Ayer himself quickly poured cold water on this, saying: “Silly rumor. Not true.“
Even so, with the Hollywood strikes paralyzing new productions, perhaps Warner Bros. might realize they have a practically complete alternative cut of a hit movie on their hands and consider putting in the work to get it on Max? We can but hope.