‘Suicide Squad 2’ Production Reportedly Delayed Due To Will Smith

A new report indicates that Suicide Squad 2 won’t be going into production until at least 2018 in order to accommodate the busy schedule of franchise star Will Smith.

Smith has the Netflix movie Bright to promote this fall, and he’ll be starring as the Genie in Disney’s live-action Aladdin as well as playing an assassin battling his younger clone in Ang Lee’s Gemini Man.

Here’s the report on the Suicide Squad 2 production delay from Variety‘s Justin Kroll:

DC Films and Warner Bros. are also expanding into standalone DC movies that are separate from the DC Extended Universe, which has caused confusion of the production timeline for certain DCEU films.

Suicide Squad 2 is a project that has become particularly confusing to fit into the schedule, as Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn was set to take the spotlight in the Suicide Squad female-centric spin-off, Gotham City Sirens. Since then, there’s been a Joker/Harley Quinn movie starring both Jared Leto and Margot Robbie announced, with GCS now listed as “in development.” If that wasn’t enough, a standalone Joker origin movie is also being planned, with Martin Scorsese producing, Todd Phillips (The Hangover) writing and directing, and a new actor playing the iconic villain.

In the midst of all that, it seems that DC/WB’s previous plans to shoot Suicide Squad 2 in spring 2018 will have to be amended, as the studio also needs to find a director to replace The Shallows’ Juame Collet-Serra, who dropped out of the sequel earlier this year. In other words, we’ll still be getting Suicide Squad 2 — just probably later than expected. We’ll keep you updated.