Joel Kinnaman Talks Suicide Squad sequels and Rick Flagg in DC Cinematic Universe

You can only hold a carrot over people's heads for so long, and even time reduced off your sentence is bound to not be as valuable when you could possibly lose your life. You can't get out early if you're dead.

That's when it becomes imperative to have someone on the ground right alongside them, commanding the skilled yet unpredictable group and keeping them focused on the task at hand. For the Suicide Squad, that comes in the form of Rick Flag, played by actor Joel Kinnaman. In a recent interview with Variety, Kinnaman spoke of the extensive training that came with inhabiting the role.

"The first thing David told me was "get big." So I did that. I gained 35 pounds in three months. Trained a lot. Ate a lot. I did gain a little too much on the belly, so I had to lose that.

I became close with our military advisers on the film. Two of them were former Navy SEALS who went on to become CIA operators. These guys were real life Rick Flags. We went through intense training. We'd go out in the woods and backpack with 50 pounds. They wanted to drain me physically and deprive me of sleep. For 60 hours we'd be doing these workouts. They'd show me videos of cartel beheadings and torture. The most awful things I've ever seen. The whole thing culminated with this six-hour exercise where they'd take over this abandoned meat locker — like this underground maze. They enlisted 15 to 20 Canadian military guys. We did these scenarios. Like hostage situations. We'd use blanks, but it was still crazy.

They showed me how you shoot or enter rooms. The most important part was the attitude. This guy isn't just a top tier operator. He is a commander."

The film has managed to build some positive buzz around it and is predicted to hit somewhere in the $120 to 140 million on opening weekend. If that pans out, the likelihood of a sequel would be substantially increased, but as Kinnaman point out, that isn't the only place that Flag might surface in the future.

"We'll see. Maybe we'll make more "Suicide Squad" movies. Who knows? The audience will decide.

If there's like military involved in one of the other films than maybe they'll call me. You can definitely see how Amanda Waller [the government agent played by Viola Davis] has a place in the other films. Maybe I'll tag along with her."

Suicide Squad debuts on August 5th.