James Gunn Spoke With Original Suicide Squad Director David Ayer Before Tackling the Sequel

Three years after David Ayer, in a haze of movie-premiere enthusiasm, jokingly shouted “f–k Marvel” during the red carpet for his 2016 movie Suicide Squad, a Marvel Studios filmmaker — Guardians of the Galaxy‘s James Gunn — is currently shooting a follow-up to Ayer’s film. With apparently little in the way of connective tissue and a cast made up of returning stars, new faces, and James Gunn regulars, the movie promises to be wildly different from Ayer’s original, and perhaps more in line with the ’80s comics that both filmmakers listed as principal inspiration for their movies. It also seems that Gunn has chatted with Ayer a bit about the project.

During an Instagram live Q&A, Gunn answered a handful of questions, one of which was whether he had talked with Ayer about the project. Without giving much in the way of details, Gunn confirmed that he had.

“David Ayer is a great guy [and] we have discussed and I’ve told him what we’re up to with The Suicide Squad at least a little bit,” Gunn told his fans on Instagram.

Ayer came into Suicide Squad fresh off the heat of the acclaimed movie Fury, and took the blockbuster experience he gained making a DC movie to Netflix for Bright. His next film, The Tax Collector, is in post-production according to his IMDb page, and then he will move on to Bright 2, which will probably get a Netflix release right around the same time The Suicide Squad is hitting theaters from Gunn.

Like Zack Snyder on the Justice League franchise, Ayer originally had plans for multiple films in and around the Suicide Squad franchise. And while Justice League was an objective failure commercially, Suicide Squad overperformed despite poor reviews and being dragged into the persistent narrative that DC could not seem to figure out what to do with their movie universe. After bouncing around between Suicide Squad-adjacent projects, Ayer finally seems to have parted ways with DC, but not without extending goodwill to Gunn.

“DC is blessed to have James Gunn,” Ayer tweeted when the Super filmmaker was hired on. “I’m getting my popcorn ready.”

Gunn’s The Suicide Squad will have a star-studded ensemble. The Suicide Squad will feature stars Margot Robbie (Harley Quinn), Viola Davis (Amanda Waller), Joel Kinnaman (Rick Flag) and Jai Courtney (Captain Boomerang) returning from Ayer’s film alongside newcomers Idris Elba, Michael Rooker, Peter Capaldi, Nathan Fillion, Sean Gunn, David Dastmalchian, Storm Reid, Pete Davidson, Taika Waititi and John Cena.

Upcoming DC movies include Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) on February 7, 2020, Wonder Woman 1984 on June 5, 2020, The Batman on June 25, 2021, The Suicide Squad on August 6, 2021, Black Adam on December 22, 2021, Shazam! 2 on April 1, 2022, The Flash on July 1, 2022, and Aquaman 2 on December 16, 2022.