Suicide Squad director claims film tanked his chances at running the DCEU

David Ayer, the director of 2016’s Suicide Squad, revealed that the movie’s ‘botched’ final cut kept him from running the DCEU.

While fans were super excited to watch the 2016 DC team-up movie that was Suicide Squad, the final cut of the film left them a bit disappointed.

The film follows a secret government agency led by Amanda Waller as they recruit imprisoned supervillains — including Harley Quinn — to execute dangerous black ops missions and save the world from a powerful threat in exchange for reduced sentences.

Suicide Squad was the third installment of the DC Extended Universe and was supposed to put director David Ayer in line for the top CEO position at DC, but now he’s revealed the film’s final cut kept him from the position.

Ayer claims final Suicide Squad cut kept him from DC CEO position

During a conversation on Jon Bernthal’s Real Ones podcast, Ayer revealed that early cuts of Suicide Squad led to rumors that he was put in line to take over DC Studios as CEO.

“During a time, during ‘Suicide Squad,’ when the dailies were coming in, people were like ‘Oh shit, maybe Ayer’s going to take over DC,’” Ayer said, “It’s ‘Game of Thrones’ in there. The palace politics were insane.”

However, Ayer explained that Warner Bros. decided to cut the film in a way he didn’t approve of and how when he showed the original version of the film to different people, they responded with ‘”rage” as they said “this is the movie we wanted, why didn’t we get this?’” Ayer continued that his version “plays much better than the studio release.”

Warner Bros.

Ayer added: “It’s like Schrödinger’s Cut now. Is it more legendary to see it or more legendary to not see it? I talked to James Gunn, and look…he’s trying to figure that whole mess out. They wanna get some scores on the board first, you know? I have, I show people, but it’s tough because I wanna fucking move on from it, I wanna heal from it.”

“That shit broke me. That handed me my ass,” Ayer said of the studio’s decision to botch his work, “Hollywood, I tell people, is like watching someone you love get fucked by someone you hate.”

Suicide Squad can be streamed on Max now. Check out our other upcoming DC hubs below:

The Batman Part II | Joker 2 | Superman: Legacy | The Brave and the Bold | The Sandman Season 2