The Suicide Squad: Is It Canon? The Official Podcast | Trailer

- So this is the famous suicide squad. - Well, we consider that term degrading. The official term is Task Force X. I love them or hate them. These are your brothers' visits for the next few days. - I am James Gunn, the co-head of DC Studios and the writer and director of The Suicide Squad. - I'm Jennifer Holland, AKA Amelia Hartcourt. - And I am Steve A.G., AKA John Economist, and technically King Shark. - And this is the Suicide Squad official podcast, a special one-off episode, where we decide is the Suicide Squad canon in the DCU. - This is the most important counsel in the world right now, making the most important decision that you can find. - I feel that, possibly, man. - I feel that power. (laughing) (upbeat music) - There's all these props here and I'm trying to see what they are. I went into Peter's office the other day and I saw that he had all these props from our movies. Peter takes everything and gives me nothing. - Well, you guys do share an office to some degree, so. - We do, but it's not, it's still his stuff. - If you broke up, who gets to keep this stuff? - What is this, what is this, what is this one? - Mongols. - Mongols. - Oh, Mongols. - Swords. - This is all stuff from the Suicide Squad. - Yeah, that's what I was trying to say. - You got Captain Goomerang, you have a rat catcher. - Yeah, rat catchers wand, blood sports stuff. I love his stuff. - Peace maker's axe. - Peace maker's axe, which he never really, yeah, and he's making a sword. - He uses it when he goes, chop, chop. - No, no, he uses it in the movie, but he never used it in the show, did he? Did he ever have his axe? - No, I don't think so. - He's a sword or an axe at the show. - I mean, he probably lost the axe at some point. He went to prison for a while, right? - He did. - He got a lot more grounded. - That's a king shark made his C4 explosive to look like a peacemaker. - Peace maker, it's actually very nice. Just put it against the wall. - I'm always getting questions about is the movie, The Suicide Squad, Canon and the DCU? I came out and said, no, it's not Canon, it's kind of like a rough memory. But, you know, lately, when people ask me, I go, well, why? Why can't it be Canon exactly? Is it Canon? Should it be Canon? I don't know. So I decided to get together with Jen and Steve and watch the movie and for us to decide here today, live in front of you, whether the movie is Canon or not. So essentially, this is life or death. - Are we live? - No, it's life or death for the Suicide Squad and the DCU. This is incredibly important. Another reason that we're doing this now is this is DC Super Villains month. And Super Villains, in the case of people like Harley Quinn or some of these characters, are they Super Villains really? Are they just have different, you know, ethics than we do? - Well, I mean, but they probably mostly don't think of themselves as Super Villains. - They nobody thinks of them. Who thinks of themselves as a Super Villain? - A cherished piece of the whole of my heart. I don't care how many men, women, and children, I need to kill and get it. - In the DC universe is a whole, all of DC stories. There are different universes. There's a DC Comics universe, which is one universe. There is the Watchmen universe, which is another universe. In film and television, there is a DCEU, which is Henry Cavill, Ben Affleck, all of those guys as the superhero and a lot of the movies that were created by Zach Snyder and others. And originally when the Suicide Squad came out, it was thought of as a part of the DCEU, as was peacemaker season one with peacemaker season one came out. Then we came along and there is now the DCU, which started with, basically the Amuse Bush was creature commandos, but it really started with David Corrin Sweat, Superman in 2025. And then there are elseworlds tales, like Matt Reeves' Batman, which is a very grounded, gritty crime story where there are no superpowers or metahumans or anything like that. And then there are other elseworlds tales like some of our cartoons and crypto shorts and things like that. So this is what we're deciding now. For the DCEU is the Suicide Squad a part of that. - Part of the reason this is happening is because you started working with DC before you were actually in a CEO or anything like that of DC. - Right, yeah. - So you were writing your own separate projects that were just passion projects that you wanted to work on within the DCEU. - Yes, in between me directing and writing Guardians of the Galaxy, volume two and volume three, I came to DC and I made the Suicide Squad and I also did peacemaker season one. So this was all a part of a pre-existing universe. People came to me and asked me if I wanted to with my partner, Peter Safran, take over DC Studios and in fact create a new studio. This is something that a lot of people don't understand about DC Studios is we're a studio. We aren't under Warner Brothers, we aren't under Paramount, we're a studio. There's Paramount Studios, Warner Brothers Studios, DC Studios. So we have control over those stories, those movies, those characters. And I said yes to that question and I regret it profoundly. (laughing) - Oh, that's what you did. - I don't know. I don't regret it. - If you haven't watched the movie for some reason, you can go to HBO Max and stream it. There are going to be a lot of spoilers ahead. (upbeat music) - You failed to follow my orders in any way and I detonate the explosive device in the base of your skull. - John Ostrander, who created the version of the Suicide Squad, I love the most. He created the modern version of the Suicide Squad. Those comics are some of the most fun comics to read. I strongly suggest you go out and you get John Ostrander's Suicide Squad run because it's so much fun and he gets to play Dr. Fitzgibbon in this movie, he says, "Good dog." - Good dog. - It's Dr. Fitzgibbon ever gonna make his way back into-- - Oh, I hope so. - Yeah. - I hope so. Okay, so let's talk about some of the things that are potentially keeping the Suicide Squad from being canon. We have a lot of actors in this movie that play other characters in the DCU. We have Michael Rooker, a Savon, who is also, you know, the Eagly Killer, a Red St. Wild, and peacemaker season two. We have Gio, who plays one of the soldados, who's also one of Lex Luthor's crew. We have Nathan Filion, who plays the detachable kid, but also plays a very important character, Guy Gardner, who's in most of our DCU project so far. We have Sean Gunn, who plays Weasel, who is a character that does continue into the DCU because he's in creature commandos, but he also plays Calendar Man, and he plays Maxwell Lord. Michaela Hoover plays The Internet Calls or The Booby Girl, been a TikTok sensation. - By the way, she loves. - She plays Camilla or something. - Yes, she's like-- - And Suicide Squad. - The president's assistant. - And then she plays Cat Grant. Now, here's what I'm gonna say. I don't think any of that is gonna stop the movie from being canon. You know, there are going to be actors who play more than one character in the DCU. It's going to happen. Michael Rooker, who played Sevant, and then played Red St. Wild for me, he came in at the very last minute, and I told him specifically that if he did me this favor of playing this character whose spoiler gets mutilated and killed, probably killed, by Eagles in the middle of the episode, that I will happily give him another character at some point in the DCU. - And also, he's kind of a security blanket to you, so he's a nice person for you to have a wife. - Well, you call security blanket, I call Thorne and myself. (laughing) That I really like the opening scene where Rooker kills the bird. And one of the things I get on the Internet a lot is why do you hate birds so much? Because first Rooker, you know, hurt kills the bird, and then the 20 star general, he's got a bunch of stars on his arms. You know, burns the cage of birds later. Which is just, for me, that is just basically showing that the president is much of a piece of crap as he is. He was much more controlled than we get from the general. But I don't hate birds. I promise you, I love birds. As Jen knows, I love birds so much that I think of the true villains as being the people that killed the bird. And to me, the opening is a revenge story about that little yellow bird and then gets to eat a micro-Rooker's dead flesh. - How can we have Rooker torn apart by birds in every single one of your future books? - That is true. This is the second time I got a bird. We have Hawk Girl kill Rooker in a future movie? - Yes, that's a great plan. - So now let's get to the other things. It might be problems. And I'll bring up one of the biggest and you can tell me what you think. - Okay. - This one I don't even want to bring up because I've never seen anybody mention it. But if you really ask me, what probably worries me the most about the suicide squad and the rest of the DCU is the fact that you guys, especially you, are voting, are putting money down on who is going to die in Korta Maltese at the beginning of- - I'm putting 20 on him that he's gonna bite it. - Me too and weasel, Goomer and Hawk Girl. - Are you guys wanna go at Alien or some type of God? - What are you doing? - I told you at the beginning of peacemaker, By then the character was becoming much more developed by the time I wrote eight episodes with Amelia Harcourt, she's one of my favorite characters in the world. By then I knew that you had this backstory with Rick Flagg and that was the reason why you were so angry at peacemaker for killing him, but we kind of have to overlook the fact that you were betting on him possibly dying. Does she actually vote on Flagg dying? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, we don't see her vote. Nobody votes on Flagg dying. That's okay. If you watch the scene from peacemaker where you learn that literally the morning before we show up to work this day that is happening at the beginning of the suicide squad, I left Rick Flagg at my house where he basically suggested maybe we should make it like real. Serious. Serious. He admits that he wants to leave his girlfriend and a whole other more complicated thing. His girlfriend, who is the girlfriend that he had from the first suicide squad movie, David Ayers, suicide squad. He admitted that he wanted to leave her for Harcourt. It's hard to believe that she would be betting on this team that he's with. You can almost rationalize the way the betting by saying, well, Amelia is just trying to fit in with everybody else and not let everybody know she's having enough fair with Rick Flagg. But I find it hard to know the Amelia that we know, who only really has one ethical truth in her life, which is that her fellow soldiers are the most important thing in the world. And that's what she'll die to protect, that she wouldn't have knocked out Amanda Waller. It's hard to imagine. It's hard to imagine that she would have ever let Rick Flagg put himself in that. She would have told him. We could say that the group thought Flagg was in on the plan. And only Amanda Waller knew that Flagg was in on the plan. Yeah. This is the suicide squad. We know that all these missions, people are going to fucking die. That's why they call them the suicide squad. So it's now us just going which ones are going to be. You wanted it to feel like a workplace where we're just like, we go to work all the time. We see people die all the time and it's like, this is what we do, this is just an everyday run. A lot of Flagg aside, the rest of them are all, to most of us are shitty villains, so it's kind of okay. What do you think it's can and do you think? I think it's can and I think we can, I think we can, I think we just, now we just spit balled a bunch of reasons why, you know, what we see is not exactly what's happening in the scene. So I don't even think we need to write it out. I probably have plot holes in other movies that are worse than that. So I think that it's, I think that we can, we can let go of it. It's not my favorite part of the movie being part of DCU, you know, but I think that we can live with it. We've got a very specific fan question here. Oh yeah, DCU, I think Captain Boomerang definitively dead is dead for the DCU cannon or is there a chance he could return in the future. Yeah, and that comes from Absolute Lily. Boomerang played by Jay Courtney. I can play another character as we've already established because I love Jay. He was great. He's a fun guy to work with a fantastic actor, but it wouldn't be Captain Boomerang because we also have the rule in the DCU that if you die, you die. You know, I mean, they're going to be clones of all the stuff. I don't care. It's comics. It's fine. But what I don't love is when we capitalize on someone's death, okay? Yandu and Guardians 2 is a perfect example. Yandu dies sacrificing his life, his son, his adopted son cries, gives a speech for him at a funeral where he talks about how he's like David Hasselhoff. And then people always want to bring him back and do things with him. And I'm like, no, you can't do that. It diminishes the meaning of death. You know, when our characters die at the beginning of the suicide squad, it's because they're getting killed. And that means something, death means something in the DCU. It doesn't mean the characters can just come back. So that's my rule overall and it's going to remain that rule. Please don't kill me. Is he going to kill me? I can't tell you how many times during both seasons I would get text messages going, oh my god, you better not die, economists better not die. Yeah. No, but that's because people know that I actually will kill people. He's my brother. Whether or not we consider the suicide squad canon, we know Rick Flagg Jr died because it's been a very important part of other stuff going forward, including his father played by Frank Rillow, who some people think is too young to be Joe Kinnaman's dad, but isn't really because he's very, very old. Um, it's true, he's a decrepit old man, Frank. I'm just gonna, I mean, I would be so excited if we got to see the alternate dimension version of Joe Kinnaman's Rick Flagg Jr. again, because it's such a departure in terms of what he normally plays. Yeah, so Joe plays a very nerdy version of Rick Flagg Jr. and season two of Peacemaker from an alternate dimension. And so that, to me, isn't bringing a character back, that's a different character. He's an alternate version of Joe Kinnaman and a Rick Flagg Jr. Which is, which is, which is different. We know the death of Rick Flagg Jr. as canon because we see that in Peacemaker season two, we know that Staro is somehow canon because Frank Rillow talks about, you know, a van and a giant starfish. They sent him overseas in the back from VW Bog with a thousand fucking costume clowns to fight a giant starfish. We've got a fan question from BCDC. DC. Any plans for Amanda Waller going forward in the DCU? Rick Flagg Sr. has been making big moves in her place this head of Argus, building up salvation, co-opting Luther's group and I'd imagine that she'd feel a certain way about that. Yeah, I have plans for Waller if Viola would like to continue. We know what's happening with her. We were strongly developing a Waller show that we never greenlit because it just didn't get to where it wanted to be. That doesn't mean that it's totally out of development. Amanda Waller is a great character. She's one of my favorite characters because of what Leo de Atebio did to her own mother at the end of peacemaker. She lost her job as the head of Argus, Rick Flagg Sr. played by Frank Rillow, took over for her as the, at first, just as the acting head of Argus and then as the actual head of Argus. We know that, you know, Viola Davis is Amanda Waller's canon. We see her in creature commandos season one. We know that King Shark is canon. We see him at the end of creature commandos season one and we know that, that weasel is canon. He's a weasel. He's harmless. He's not harmless. He's killed 27 children, believe you know. Weasel that says that he killed 27 children in line. Obviously, that's canon that people believe that. It's not canon that, that happened. Yeah, because you go into more detail about his, his back story. We learn his backstory and why he's accused of killing these children, but in fact, he tried to save the children. And even 27 was an exaggeration by people, about how many people died. So how about Mangal, who is Mangal's daughter in the comics? Mangal! Go! Does Mangal exist in the DCU? Mangal was not my best choice for a character because Mangal's a pretty big character. He's pretty powerful and Mangal's not that powerful. I just thought Mangal was a funny, I wanted to use the dumbest characters. So I chose Mangal. Sorry, that's what I mean. I think it's a silly character. Her name was Mangal because she's a gal. I thought that was funny. And so I chose her in the same way. I thought Pokemon was a silly character, but trying to add him, yeah, the detachable kid. What about this, Steve? Do you want to read this question from Elite Titan? Elite Titan on DC Discord, high James Gunn, with TDK surviving the events of the movie will we get to see him or a different version of him, possibly not Nathan Filion, appear in the DCU. I did purposefully not kill TDK at the end of the movie because I thought that if we get going then I'd want to bring him back. Because you love Nathan, which is sweet. Yeah, but also he was funny in the movie. So I thought I might bring him back. Could he come back? Yes. Would he be played by Nathan Filion? Probably not because Nathan is very famously guy gardener. Also, he's, I think we find out he's useless. He's pretty useless. Pretty useless. Yeah, his arms can slap you, but he's slapping. He wasn't even punching. He doesn't even have any, he doesn't even get any force into his arm. Yeah, because he doesn't have, what is he, he's not. But he might be able to like, let's say you lose something and like, air ducts or something, you can probably send up his arm up there to get it. Okay. It's a very unique situation, but if you needed it to save the, you never know when you needed it. Or like, eagerly failing to drop the exploding helmet, TDK could have carried it over. You think TDK would have done a better job in eagerly? Did you see what he did in the suicide squad? I think he would have done a better job in eagerly, eagerly screwed that up. What about flow? Oh, flow, you know, a flow crawly played by Tuna Shea, who's just magnificent actress. We see her in super. and that same character shows up again, but now she has obviously survived going to prison because of knocking out Amanda Waller. I, my backstory for her is she's come out of all of this as a hero. She's now the director of the FBI, which we see in Superman that she's in the roundtable with all the head of the CIA, head of the FBI, head of Argus, et cetera, when Lex comes in and tries to pitch that group on allowing him to take down Superman. So yeah, she's come out of everything okay and we will probably see her again. She knocked out Waller with her very own golf club. A fucked-up is that. Oh my God, what the fuck did you do? I was on, I was standing on set with Biola Davis and they get Tinashe all set up to knock her out and she goes, oh, I thought I was getting knocked out by the little white lady. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. She's very excited. And she's also like, you're doing this to a sister? She's like, she's had that and that. She's like, let's talk about Bloodsport. So Bloodsport is in your syllabus character. He has all these little things on himself that can turn into different weapons and different parts of the bigger weapons. As character in the comics a little different, his superpower is that he goes into a sort of a multi-dimensional armory and can pull any weapon out of that armory that he wants. But we changed him and he actually is really cool. Idris is cool and I love how the characters costume looks. It's one of my favorite costumes that I've created with Juniana, our great costume designer. Bloodsport is the closest thing to a protagonist in the film, a primary protagonist. It was gonna be different people at different times. Originally, it was going to be Will Smith's Dead Shot. Then it was like, well, maybe Idris will just play Dead Shot. Idris, at first, didn't care. And then Idris really, I think sort of gets a negative reaction to it and he called me up freaking out 'cause he did want to play Dead Shot. And then it was- - Which I get, by the way, it's like- - Why do you want to come in there and like- - Yeah, be the second guy. - I agree. - Agreed. So then it was Deathstroke. And Joe Manguinello, who's a friend of mine and a really good guy, it wasn't even for sure gonna be Deathstroke. It just had come up that it might be Deathstroke would be the best. And I actually think Idris would have made a great Deathstroke. And so that came up and Joe called me and he was upset about it. I love Joe and so I'm like, yeah, okay. And then then we came up with Bloodsport, who I liked the way we were able to create his power set in a different way. - I like Bloodsport so much. I'd like to see the character return. I also like working with Idris. Idris is a good guy, so I would like to see him return as Bloodsport or even somebody else. - We didn't want people to know that who Idris Elbow was playing. And so it's set in the script, Vigilante. And on the back of his chair, even it's that Vigilante. So everybody thought Idris Elbow was playing Vigilante. - So- - It was so totally unnecessary today. - I would be confused. - So Steve needed to walk up and say, who the fuck is Bloodsport? - Yeah, I was like, wait, I thought he was Vigilante. And so I was trying to remember the name now Bloodsport. - Because acting is so hard. - We had to change a word. So acting is, so that's so hard. - No, no, no, no. - Oh, no, no, no, no. - Wow. - No, no. This entire time he's been Vigilante in the script. And also, and I'm like, who the fuck is, and I'm trying to remember the name, and the only name I can think of is my own. So I said, who the fuck is John Economos? - Yeah. - Multiple times. - Yeah, multiple times. He walked up with us shooting cameras, three cameras on him. Who the fuck is John Economos? - Who the fuck is John Economos? Oh, fuck, man. - I still don't understand it, Steve. - I don't either. - He's in prison for putting Superman in the ICU with a kryptonite bullet. Dubois. - Same answer as the last one. Piss off. - Yeah, so again, to the DC Discord, Nick's seven heavens did Bloodsport really shoot Superman with a kryptonite bullet in the ICU. - In the movie, he's in prison for having shot Superman with a kryptonite bullet and taking him down. So he's the only person to have ever taken down Superman. And so the question is, can this be canon? And this comes up, there's a couple of things that get in the way potentially of it being canon. One is time. People are always asking me about timelines. I think we got chill out a little bit with the timelines because it's not possible to make things perfectly lined up. But that said, Superman happens in 2025. A man if tomorrow happens in 2027, peacemaker season two happens a couple months after Superman does and so when did suicide squad happen? Now the movie came out in 2021. That would have been before Superman was on the scene because we know at the beginning of the movie, Superman has only been on the scene for three years. So we would have to push up when the suicide squad happened to say as opposed to 21, when it came out to like 23-24. Maybe that's possible, maybe that's not a big deal. I don't think that's the biggest deal in the world. The other thing it says at the beginning of Superman, which is most definitively canon, is that this is the first time that Superman has ever been defeated in battle. I don't necessarily think that flying around nonchalantly perhaps taking your flying dog for a walk or whatever he was doing and being taken down with a kryptonite bullet in going to hospital is battle, is battle. Not even necessarily defeat, he's just a shot. I like this bit of history. I think it's sort of interesting if Bloodsport took down Dave Cornsworth's Superman with a kryptonite bullet. It doesn't bother me, I think it could have happened. I'm not going to say that's going to get in the way of things being canon. Crimson fish writes how early in Superman's career did the blood sport shooting him with the bullet take place. Well, it would have had it been pretty early because even Superman's pretty early in his career is only three years into it. Nat on the DC Discord writes Bloodsport is the closest thing to a main protagonist in the film. Was there any pressure to hinge so much emotional depth on a character the audience likely wasn't familiar with? Same thing with the first Suicide Squad. Nobody knew who any of those characters were. Besides, maybe Harley Quinn, who knows what King Shark is, who knows what any of these characters are. The Suicide Squad, the comics were never the biggest comics in the world anyway. So the only character that was known to even a small portion of the public was Harley Quinn. And she was actually pretty popular. Strangely, she's probably the most popular female character in DC, which is crazy considering Wonder Woman and all that. And Wonder Woman's had a big resurgence in recent years. But in years previous, Harley was probably the most popular. All right, well, let's get into Harley Quinn. Everyone wants to know about Harley Quinn. What's canon? What's not canon? I think Harley is actually one of the more difficult things in this to justify as being canon in the DCU. Mekhan Sumiki asks are Harley and Joker already split in the DCU because in Suicide Squad and outright states their breakup, he's not mentioned by name. He's not mentioned by name, so it doesn't outright say their breakup. So I would say to TBD, Harley's relationship to the Joker is specific, right? Well, we definitely haven't established the Joker yet in the DCU at all. We've established Batman. We've already seen that he exists. We've seen him in Creature Commandos for a glimpse. But we don't know if Joker exists yet. And obviously, Joker is a part of Harley's past. And the other thing I'll tell you, which is just being completely honest, is Margot Robbie is one of my favorite actors to work with. She is so good in the movie. Like, we were watching her last night. We're laughing so hard. It's so much of the stuff she does. She's so crazy. I love her as Harley. I don't know if she wants to play Harley again. She may be over that. She was a huge star when she played Harley Quinn for you. And she's just even becoming even bigger. Kind of the biggest female star in the world. So I don't know where Margot's head is with all of this. But also, there's, you know, I, Harley, as a character, I'm almost certainly going to use in the DCU. And if Margot was a player, then I'll bend over backwards to explain that in the world. But if she doesn't, right, then I might go with somebody else where I don't have to be attached to what happens to Harley in this movie. That's really the situation. So what I'm saying is Margot is the one who has to decide whether or not suicide is quite as canon. So, wow. This is all on you. And again, it's difficult because she talks about her old boyfriend. That could be the Joker, or it could be somebody else. But if it's somebody else, that means Harley Quinn came out of a different type of situation than what we normally see Harley Quinn coming out of. Which seems, you know, for me, there are certain things that I see incredibly important to certain characters. You know, now what I see as important to characters, maybe somebody else doesn't. But for me, you know, Superman is Clark Kent. He comes from another planet. He comes to this, you know, his world was destroyed. He was adopted by rural people in Kansas, okay? That's really important. Batman, his parents were murdered, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. There's just these, his life is an eternal quench for justice that will never be met because he cannot save his parents no matter what he does. That's the core of Batman for me, or part of the core of Batman for me. So all of these things are really important. And for Harley, she was born of this sort of abusive relationship where she was taken advantage of, and by a crazy guy who was a lot more evil than she was. And not having that as part of her background is difficult. You learn at the beginning of the Suicide Squad that she has a previous relationship with flag and with boomerang. Flag. Oh, sorry. Let me through. Hit boomer. Be down back in prison house. Take a road rage in a bank. Is that a previous relationship from Suicide Squad? David Suicide Squad. I don't think it needs to be. See, that's a thing where, you know, I think that we can say that these characters work together in the past that Harley's been doing, you know, Suicide Squad missions for a while. We know Task Force X has, you know, existed for a while. And that we don't necessarily need to say all that stuff. Because then, if you say that's canon, we're screwed. Because that has been an afflux Batman in it that has a bunch of other characters. We can never use Dead Shot, which I would like to be able to use that character at some point. So we have all these, you know, other things that it's really tying our hands. Let's talk about peacemaker. So originally, I wrote the role of peacemaker for Dave Batista. Dave, at the same time, was offered to do army of the dead as well as that little spy girl movie, the spy movie. And he was offered both of those movies. He would have had to say no to both of those movies and say yes to us. And we were paying, I think, we could only afford to pay him, you know, one third of what he was going to get paid TV. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So in the end, he did that. And that is all good because that allowed me to pick my second choice for that role, which was John Cena. Over the years, John and I had become very close. And he's one of my favorite actors. And it was his performance in this movie that inspired me when asked later after this movie was coming together before it was even out in theaters. If there was a character that I wanted to turn into an HBO show, which character would I choose that I instantly said peacemaker. I like the idea of creating this sort of incredibly fucked up, half conservative, half radical, maniac, and maybe try to find within him some sort of heart. How much did you, you didn't get to know John too well on this movie, even though you're on the run of a lot? No, no, no. Well, the weird thing is with John, and he had told me when, and I don't know if he's still doing this whenever he starts a project, he picks a song that he wants to learn on piano, and he was learning piano. So any time we were not shooting, John was in his trailer tinkering on his little Casio. Yeah, John, music. So he was not hanging out a bunch. No, he doesn't hang out as much as other people do. Like, you're just hanging out all the time. And, you know, John is a machine. He is always working on improving himself, whether that's reading. I walk into his trailer, he's reading these big, thick books all the time. He's always got a book. He's always working on something, whether it's his piano playing or whatever. He's also one of the most famous people in the world. Yeah. So people like that kind of have to build these walls that you have to wear them down to get to know them. Yeah. The moment John kind of softened to myself and Dave Dasmolchen actually, Dave and I were just kind of quoting Caddy Shack one day on set. And John heard us. Yeah, that's it. And immediately started going, oh, we're all going to get laid. And we were like, holy shit. And he was just reciting 80s quotes from 80s, you know, movies. That's a great memory. And a great time to get to John's video. He sent us a video. Oh, sure. Hey, James. Hey, Jen. Hey, Steve. A long time. It's been too long. My lemon straight kids. And we're talking about the suicide squad. So in the first few days of filming, James convinced production to build a beach. And Atlanta. And it was massive in scope. And he was, I don't know, five football fields away from a ceiling direction. I had taken his advice and not read the comics about peacemaker. He said to just let it rip but come up with ideas and have an idea who the character is. Well, I did just that. And we started to do the first few takes. And I could sense some frustration with James. He then just said, hey, wait, I'm coming over over a megaphone and then ran the 500 yards to connect with me and said, hey, this isn't working. Throw all that stuff away. And just be like a douchey, broy Captain America. Now what a teachable moment. I put a ton of work and a ton of effort and a prepping for this character. But the person who sees the movie inside their head is like, hey, this is not what I see. So I could either stand and defend my decision or be coachable and take great feedback. And peacemaker is born, which led to two seasons of a wonderful romp for the 11 street kids. So James, as you know, I love you very much and for many reasons. And this is one. Your lifelong lesson of always being coachable and just because you come with ideas, it doesn't mean you shouldn't be open to other perspectives. It's still one that I carry with me today. - That's such a sweet story. - He really should tell that story to David Corn sweat. (laughing) - Take direction. (laughing) I'm kidding, David's great. - Come with ideas, you all don't let them go. - He is, David is, David is, by the way. But with John, I do, I sort of remember that moment. I mean, I remember that it wasn't going like how I wanted it to go. And it was a lot of peacemaker dialogue 'cause it was all the dialogue about if it would mean I could, you know, make the world a little more peaceful. I would eat a thousand dicks, I don't care. But this whole beach was completely covered in dicks. And somebody said, I'd eat every dick until the beach was clean for liberty, I would say no problem. - You can find out later, maybe he would like that because of who peacemaker is. - Yeah, well that's John's addition. That's John's addition definitely. You know, I didn't say be a bisexual, do she cast an America? I was just be a do she cast an America? Then all of a sudden, he's like, you know, constantly coming on to address throughout the whole movie. I remember him not doing, he was being more stiff. I think he was thinking a little bit more about this military guy. And so he didn't have the sort of like swagger that I wanted him to have. And to me that really was when the character was born and then he became that and really owned it. We'll see what happens to him in salvation. - I feel like we should take this opportunity based on his story to talk about that beach that you guys built on a field in Atlanta. - Like the most impressive set I've ever seen him. - It is definitely one of the most, if not the most impressive sets. Beth Mikkel was our production designer. You know, there's a lot of huge issues with actually going to a beach because the tide changes, the sound, you know, electricity, shooting in water, all this stuff. And it's incredibly expensive to move everybody out there. So at some point we said, let's build the beach on the back lot of Trilestunios, which we did. And it was a gigantic beach with working waves. - A whole wave machine. - 90 degree water. - 90, it was so, it was so cool. - They would say cut and they'd say, you can go to your trailers and we were just like, I'm kind of cool just floating here in this nice warm water. - Yeah, and we just, we had such a great time and it was like every night was kind of like, you know, just hanging out on the beach. - It's interesting because peacemaker is such a bad guy in this movie, but not totally evil. He's multi-dimensional because you can see how bad he feels about having to kill Rick Flag. But then he goes too far because he's going to kill Racketcher. And that kind of is the thing that would make him totally irredebable in our eyes. That moment where he realizes he's going to kill this kid who he really likes simply because that's the way he's lived his life. That's the beginning of Chris going, what the fuck is going on with me? What's wrong with me? I just killed a guy who's kind of a hero to me that I look up to, you know. A guy who I think is an eminently good person, you know, and I'm doing it because somebody told me to, you know? - Chris is starting to question his ideals at the beginning of peacemaker season one. - And also he's not, when he's fighting Rick Flag, he's not completely without reason. He says to Flag, he says, if this gets out, it will cause an international incident. And I'm about creating the piece. So even though he knows and he says and he acknowledges that what the American government did was wrong by putting the truth out there, it's going to cause way more damage than if it didn't. And that's a reasonable way of thinking. I'm not saying it's right. And at the end of the day, if Rick Flagg just handed over the drive and just said, All right, this is obviously more important to you than it is to me. He wouldn't have killed him. Well, let's also point out something really important in that situation. At the end of that scene, Joel, who's so good in the movie, also I must say, who plays Rick Flick. Joel is murdering, he's winning the fight and he's murdering -- he's making -- He's going to -- Yeah, he's going to -- He's going to -- out of these seconds away from that. He seconds away from snapping his neck with a pipe. Maybe peacemaker was going to kill him, maybe he wasn't. But Rick Flick is about to murder peacemaker. Now, I'm not saying I don't understand that he's going to do that. But we very purposefully played with shades of gray in those scenes with those two characters and those two actors and the back and forth between them. But the situation with Clio is pretty black and white. That's the one that's pretty black and white. Yeah, it's pretty black and white. He goes too far in that situation. Yeah, yeah. I think it's that toe into evil out of his fucked up ideals. That is what causes all of the changes that happen over two seasons of peacemaker. And we see actual true long-term redemption in a character who goes from bad to good. So I think that all can be canon. For sure. For sure. That all makes perfect sense with the rest of the story. For sure. So we're going to get into King Shark. Steve not only played John Akanamos in the movie, but he also played King Shark on set. So Steve had a walk around in this giant King Shark get up. Not always. I mostly was in. Oh, then mostly just a onesie. But when I'm near other people are walking through like bushes or trees, I had to wear this, what they call this displacement so people would know not to walk in the space that was King Shark's body. So you were sort of motion reference and everything like that, but you also were acting with the actors. That was that. We go to the table read and it was the first time meeting Idris and Margo and Daniela and Peter and like all these huge stars are like sitting around me and I was getting really nervous. And as soon as they started the read, it hit me, James and I never discussed a voice. And I was so nervous. So I was like, he's a giant shark. I'll just talk like me mad, like as ominous as I could. I wrote it for Slime, who's my friend who I'm known from the Guardians movies. You know, this might be surprising, but he's not cheap. Again, he is my friend and he is Sylvester Stallone. And I didn't want to have him come in and do this role and then feel the same way about his voice and have to replace him. Replace him. Yeah. Didn't extensive search. He tried out a lot of voices. I recorded three different full actors in the whole movie and we, you know, some not unwell known actors and it just wasn't right. And I called up Peter and I was like, I just, I think it should be Slime. And so we decided to do it. Slime came in and he just, he killed it. He killed it. There's exactly what I thought of the voices being is running around. He's so cute. His voice is great. Slime was, you know, he's like in the voices running around and he's like, he's just awesome. Actors still probably think of you as King Shark because just like how all the actors on Guardians totally think of Sean as being rocket. Back to Discord, patty3344, will there be more movies or shows that include King Shark? Well, on this one, you're in real luck because, you know, creature commandos season two is currently being animated. It's going to be out shortly after "Man of Tomorrow" comes out and in one of the characters and in the creature commandos, as set up at the end of the last season, is King Shark. So he'll be a regular in creature commandos season two. You better not kill him in creature commandos and be so bummed out. Yeah, you got to bring him back live action because I like action. I like action. I like action. I like action. Yeah, I like to see you in that. So fun. In that onesie again. Oh, that's so fun. Let's talk about Ratcatcher 2. Yeah, a Ratcatcher 2. Ratcatcher 2 is not really a character from the comics. Obviously, Ratcatcher 1 is a character from the comics. Again, I thought it was funny. Again, it was trying to bring in all the silliest characters, but then give them this depth. And I think that was true of this character, played by Daniela Melchior, who was a real discovery in a sense gone on to a pretty cool career. And she had this sort of natural ability to just be real and also an ability to seem very lazy. We screen tested quite a few young actors. The casting director goes out in auditions, a bunch of people for a role. And when somebody like Ratcatcher 2 is one of the stars of this show, you go deep. We went really deep, hundreds of performances. So because you also weren't necessarily looking for a big star. We weren't looking for a big star. She was just looking for who was the best actor for the role. Isn't it true that she was almost like a late addition to the test? Yeah, I mean, it was like very laid back. She was like, it was very much like on her iPhone in the middle of the, I don't know where she was. But I instantly saw that there was something special there and brought her into test. And then she came in and she just really killed the screen test. I mean, she really killed the screen. It was just such a specific character, right? And she so fully embodied that. Yeah, there was also, there was a problem with some of the actors were very good. But they, some of them, they were all young. But some of them were more womanly. So when they were doing the scene on the bus, which is one of my favorite scenes, Ratcatcher is talking about her past and her father's death, Tyco TT with Idris, who's talking about how his father tortured him as a child. And we see the nod of peacemaker, we realize that he's in the same boat. And they're saying they will protect each other, sometimes it seems more like a romantic thing. Right. And you wanted it to feel like the father of daughter relationship, when Idris says you remind me of my daughter, you really wanted it to feel, you wanted the audience to feel that. Yeah. The reason I'm here. Why are you so afraid of rats? You know, she says I'll protect you and he says I'll protect you and she does. He saves her from peacemaker. And then she says no, I'll protect you. And she does. And when she holds her hand over Idris at the end, what we call the rat-tism, the baptism of rats, rat-tism, I have to admit. But she's holding them there. For some reason, it was just important to me that that wasn't like a lover, comforting another lover. It was like a child comforting a father. It was allowing someone who was younger and in some ways weaker than you to protect you. And I felt like that was a really sweet and important moment. There's a note here that she never kills anyone. And that in an earlier draft she dies in polka dot man lives, is that true? What happened was at the end, wall or shot her. Really? Where? In the head. No. I know what you are. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. No, no, no. I remember what happened was she took the files that implicated the U.S. government in the corruption of Courta Maltese. She brought them back with her and was not going to give them up. And Amanda Waller shoots and kills her. Because she has the knowledge. And which point? Because she won't give it up. It reshoots Amanda Waller. Holy shit. Wow. What an alternate history that could be. I'm glad that didn't happen. So heavy ending. So heavy ending. It was exactly that. It was too dark. It was too dark. And there's plenty of dark stuff in the movie. But it was too dark. It just was too much. Yeah. You wanted to save the real dark stuff for future projects that you have coming up. Steve, we have a fan question. Yeah, we do. Oh, my God. It's from the DC Discord. And it's from a guy named Diego or a girl named Diego. Who knows? Hi, Mr. Gunn. I'm a huge fan of your works and got way more into DC ever since I saw the Suicide Squad. One of my biggest questions is, will Ratcatcher be back in the DCU? I mean, I think the same answer for Ratcatcher, Bloodsport, all of these characters, besides King Shark, who we're going to see again is that I would love to see Ratcatcher again. If we decide that this is canon, and if not, I would love to catch, you know, Castaniel is another character in DC. Let's talk about Polkadotman. Yeah, I mean, how did I add Polkadotman to the movie, as I looked up on the internet, dumbest DC character of all time, and by far, the most, you know, answered question was Polkadotman. But the fun to me was turning Polkadotman into a true flesh and blood, fully fledged character, whose power was seemingly funny, but in the end was not funny at all because his mother gave it to him by torturing him and, you know, infecting him with an interdimensional virus that, yes, made him extraordinarily powerful, but also miserable and gave him a pain, incredibly painful life. We're all going to die. I hope so. And then I decided to make him the darkest and saddest character in this entire movie. And in fact, interestingly enough, have talked about developing a Crill's TV show, which would be about his mother, and there are many superheroes here at Crill's. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So it's been discussed. And that's not an active development, but we've talked about it because I think it would be interesting to see what happened to the rest of his family. Where did they go? You know, what were they like back then? And I think that there's a lot of interesting, you know. - How did she come to acquire this interdimensional virus that she infects him with? - I feel like this is a good segue into a video that we received from David Desmelt. - Wow. - Polkadot Man himself. - Hi James, hi Jen. Hi Steve. It's your old pal, Abner Crill. That's right, AKA the Polkadot Man. James, you gave me one of the greatest experiences that I've ever had working on a film. And I am so lucky and grateful that I get to be friends with all of you, that I got to be a part of this rebirth of the shape that you brought to the DCU. I know you all remember this, but the empanadas day. I was always so impressed with how committed John was to his performance. They're good friend John Cena, the peacemaker. And the day that he sat and ate was it three dozen. I mean, in my mind, the mythology of it is that he ate 50 empanadas just two. This 'cause his character is supposed to be just seeing their challenge down on empanadas. I can't even begin to talk about how many different memories meant so much to me. I found Bubblegum, our cat right there in the middle of production, Steve A.G., my brother and I got to just be on set together every day. I got to watch the magic that is Margot's Harley Quinn. I got to see Idris up close and personal. And I got to play Abner. Polkadot Man, just one of my favorite roles I've ever got to play. James, you're such an incredible director. You totally helped me discover who he was and how he lived within me and I'm so lucky. Love you guys. - Is there anything with Polkadot Man that can't be canon? That doesn't make any sense. - No. - His death can be canon. - Yeah, the crills can be canon. I mean, yeah, I may have other people that I think are crills already in the DCU. Yeah, I mean, I think it's, you know, there is definitely a lot of world politics that happens in the DCU. We see, you know, a country called Marevia and, you know, going into another country, we have this movie which is kind of overtly political in certain ways, you know, the government's involvement in this, you know, this corrupt, these corrupt endeavors in court of maltees, which let's face it is based on real stuff from our past. - Mm-hmm. And you've called back to some of this stuff in both creature commandos and lanterns. - Yes, but our city doesn't have a Superman. So it's understandable that our response to intergalactic threats or whatever giant starfish comes sliding out of the ocean next is firepower, but firepower does not save lives. - At all of the stuff with court of maltees is, could be easily canon. The character of soul, she could, she could be the leader now of- - Of that country. - Of that country. - Which is what mean it's a, you know, in better hands than it was before. - Could there be other starrows? Because at the very end, starrows says, I was happy floating in space. Where does starrow come from? Are there more starrows? Like was starrow a good entity and then became evil because of these people experimenting? - Yeah, I mean, I think that's really that, to me that's sort of the center of the movie, in a lot of ways. I mean, it's, you know, it's sentiment within a different type of sentiment, within a different type of sentiment, but at the ending of the movie, we have this very sweet scene where they, you know, the rats, you know, the scum of the earth, you know, it's very Christian in that respect. What, you know, Tyka says to his daughter about, you know, if even the loliest of us have meaning so must we all. In this movie for better or worse, rats are sort of innocence and dole-ness in this film. And then at the end of all of that starrows like, dude, I was fine. I was happy. And we know that the thinker has been torturing Starrow for years and years and taking sexual advantage of Starrows, which comes out in his different forms. And so we have this class A sadist pervert, wonderfully played by the amazingly wonderful Peter Capaldi. And then at the end, he's like, I was happy, man. I was just staring at the starting. - My own business. - But I don't know where the hell he came from. That's a, that's a question for a different time. - So in the end, the biggest question is, is the movie canon or is it canon adjacent? - Canon light? - Yeah, canon with asterisks. - Like piecemaker season one. - Yep. - Or is it not canon at all? - Yep. - So what do you guys think? - I mean, my vote, I can't really understand unless you're really nitpicking on some odd things. Why the whole movie can't just be canon. I think, yeah, I think it could be canon. That's why-- - So it's referenced enough in the various, you know, current DCU projects that I think it makes a canon. - That settles it then. I think that the suicide squad is within the canon of the DCU, it's decided. I'd say we have one small asterisk, which is what exactly is the future of Harley Quinn? I wanna be given a little leeway with this by the fans because I'm not sure exactly, you know, how that's gonna manifest itself. But other than that, I think that we can pretty much say the entire movie is canon. I don't think there's a problem. Now maybe somebody's gonna come to me on threads and I accept the challenges and trying to answer them with something that can't be canon within this movie and that's okay, because we're gonna make mistakes. We're gonna make mistakes in this movie. We're gonna make mistakes in other movies. But for the most part, I think that it actually fits much more easily into canon than peacemaker sees one does. So I think that we can actually say that, yes, not only is the suicide squad canon, but it's the first canon film in the DCU and that everybody should go watch it right now on HBO Max Margot Carl James. I also think that it's just important to reiterate that you don't really see someone playing a character as a reason why you can't use them again or the reason why that makes the character that they previously played. - I mean, I can't imagine, you know, I mean, it won't be too long before we're casting, you know, Batman, who isn't cast yet, by the way, by all the people, thinking he's gonna show up in this or that. It's all bullshit. But when we do cast the DCU Batman, which isn't very far away, you know, I don't wanna, if I gave somebody a day role in suicide squad that is gonna be the best Batman, I'm not gonna rule him out from that. I wanna get everybody into account, you know, one of the things that excites me about casting, Batman is being able to, you know, pick a Batman who's actually the best actor for that role. You know, Superman's have always been chosen based on who the best actor for that role is. And for some reason, Batman's are always chosen as movie stars. - Do you have to take into account when you're casting AIDS? - Yeah, definitely. - As like, they're gonna be doing this 10 years from now. - Definitely, that's a huge thing. - They can be 60. - People are always looking for a little hints about casting of Batman roughly, you know, Batman and Superman are around the same age. I don't think that they're drastically different ages. They're future best pals. - Contemporaries, in any case. - Contemporaries, exactly. - Wow, we're getting into some deep stuff here, and I just wanna say that it's a good thing that we don't have Peter's saffering here to spoil more of your casting. - To spoil more of everything. - More of the castings that you've actually done. Well, there we have it, you guys. I just wanna thank everyone out there for all of the questions that you've given us. - Thanks for watching. - I'm Jennifer Holland. - See ya. - You guys are not gonna say your names as well, I'm the only one who's good. - No, everyone knows who we are. - He's James Gunn. - That's Steve A.G. - This has been a DC studio showcase presentation. Thanks. - This was a no BB sound production for HBO Max and DC Studios hosted by James Gunn and co-host Jennifer Holland and Steve A.G. Executive producer for HBO Max is Becky Roe. Executive producers for DC Studios are Gary Barbosa and Philip Sopa-90s, Executive producers for DC are Mike Palata and Victor Diaz. Executive producers for OBB are Michael D. Ratner, Scott Ratner and Toby Lawless. Producer for HBO Max is Aaron Kelly. Produced by Toby Lawless, research producer Jesse Holland, production manager Kevin Lin, associate producer Sam Harrison, technical director in Sung Huang, editor Jesse Holland, post-production supervisor Maryanna Crisostomo, assistant editor Mark McCullough and Mark Alkisid, production accountant Bobby Hanna, director of photography, Heath Gresham, production designer Liz Klikowski, set dresser Kevin Fallon, Robert Pound and Brian Kim, sound mixer and editor Josh Falcon, hair and makeup artist Kendall Shannon, production assistant Lorenzo Robertson, special thanks to graphics and artwork, HBO Max, concept and design, Warner Brothers, global archives, Matthew Truex and Jesus Aguirre.