Jai Courtney Says James Gunn's The Suicide Squad Will Be "Tonally Different"

When Jai Courtney comes back to the role of "Digger" Harkness in The Suicide Squad, the world around him will have changed significantly. There have been casting changes, tonal changes, and a new director -- Guardians of the Galaxy filmmaker James Gunn -- has stepped in for David Ayer, whose Suicide Squad was a big commercial hit but a critical failure. At first it seemed that Ayer's influence would continue to loom large over the characters he had brought to prominence, but slowly all of the plans he and Warner Bros. had talked about were dropped or altered, and now Courtney -- along with fellow returning Suicide Squad stars Margot Robbie, Joel Kinnaman, and Viola Davis -- will be playing the same character, in what is ostensibly the same universe...but things are going to be pretty different.

During an interview in support of his upcoming film Semper Fi -- you can read the full conversation next week here on ComicBook.com -- we asked Courtney whether he thought the shift was going to be weird. He is pretty confident in the ability of the cast and Gunn to pivot, although he admits that things are going to be pretty different this time out.

"I don't think it's going to be weird," Courtney told ComicBook.com. "It's kind of funny that we're getting it up to go again and there's a bunch of new people and a bunch of old people, too. It's going to be different, for sure, but I think everyone's welcoming that challenge and welcoming the new energy in. I loved David, I loved working with David, I'd work with David again in a heartbeat. But Gunn, too, is quite prolific and really, obviously, does know what he's doing. I'm excited to see what he brings to it. It's going to be tonally different but very cool as well. The world has evolved from where we were at at that point; he's going to have his own take on it, and it's going to be great."

Nobody knows much about the plot of Gunn's The Suicide Squad yet, which will also star David Dastmalchian, Taika Waititi, Michael Rooker, Peter Capaldi, Idris Elba, and more. The film reportedly stars a number of relatively unknown supervillains like Polka-Dot Man, King Shark, and Ratcatcher.

You can see Courtney next in Semper Fi, which will be avialable in select theaters and on streaming video on demand platforms on October 4. He is currently preparing to start production on The Suicide Squad, which is slated for a release on August 6, 2021.