After a two and a half year online campaign, fans may have finally gotten their wish now that the Snyder Cut of Justice League will be arriving exclusively on HBO Max at some point next year, but it looks like there’s another never-before-seen version of a DCEU movie that was butchered by studio interference trying to gain some publicity and momentum.
David Ayer has never been shy in admitting that the cut of Suicide Squad that arrived in theaters was nothing like the pitch he’d made to the studio that got him the job in the first place, and ever since the Snyder Cut was officially confirmed, the filmmaker seems to have been talking about his original vision for the movie more than ever, which surely can’t be a coincidence.
We’ve already heard that the Ayer Cut of Suicide Squad could be next on Warner Bros.’ list of reassembled DCEU failures, and it would be a whole lot cheaper to finish than whatever they end up spending on the Snyder Cut, given that basically all of the required footage is already in the can and would just need some extra visual effects work to bring it up to scratch.
Suicide Squad was definitely a great idea for a comic book blockbuster but the execution was more than a little off, which is probably why the titular team were so quick to be subjected to a soft reboot under Guardians of the Galaxy’s James Gunn, and in his frequent social media posts, Ayer claims that his preferred take on the movie would paint Jared Leto’s much-maligned Joker in an entirely different light.
One of Zack Snyder’s preferred methods for promoting his cut of Justice League was posting unseen images online, and it appears that Ayer is now following suit after revealing a new photo of the Joker and Harley Quinn, which you can check out below.
Based on Ayer’s online activity, it certainly looks as though he’s angling for the opportunity to get back into the editing room and put together the version of Suicide Squad that he envisioned in his head, and looking at how it turned out for Justice League, you can’t exactly rule it out at this point.