Release the Ayer Cut: WarnerMedia “Won’t Be” Developing David Ayer's Suicide Squad Director’s Cut

WarnerMedia won't #ReleaseTheAyerCut. After a years-long fan campaign demanding the company [...]

By Cameron Bonomolo

WarnerMedia won't #ReleaseTheAyerCut. After a years-long fan campaign demanding the company #ReleaseTheSnyderCut, the four-hour director's cut of Justice League now streaming on HBO Max as Zack Snyder's Justice League, some took to social media to call for the never-before-seen version of another DC Films production: Suicide Squad. After director David Ayer called the version of the movie released into theaters in 2016 "my cut," the filmmaker later said the studio-meddled Suicide Squad was "ripped to pieces" and that he "took the hits like a good soldier when the studio cut hit the streets." On the "abandoned" Ayer Cut of Suicide Squad, he tweeted in October: "It is f—king amazing."

"We won't be developing David Ayer's cut [of Suicide Squad]," Ann Sarnoff, Chair and CEO of WarnerMedia Studios and Networks Group, told Variety.

In his October tweet, where Ayer reported watching the Ayer Cut for the first time "since it was abandoned," the End of Watch and Bright filmmaker wrote: "It is f*cking amazing. On God. I felt guilty for years like I f*cked [up]. Nope. It's fire. It's the tone of the Comicon trailer 100%."

Ayer also tweeted an acknowledgment that re-releasing Suicide Squad, which brought the tattooed Joker (Jared Leto) and bat-swinging baddie Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) into the shared DC Extended Universe, is "simply not my call or my [intellectual property]."

"I love WB — it's always been my 'home studio,'" Ayer wrote. "I fully respect and support the incredible path the DCU is taking under their stewardship. My cut of Suicide Squad may always be just a rumor. And that's just fine."

The theatrical version of Suicide Squad so infamously pared-down Leto's role that the actor — who only recently reprised the Joker role for the first time when he participated in additional photography on the Justice League Snyder Cut — once openly questioned whether there were "any [Joker scenes] that didn't get cut."

"There are a lot of scenes that didn't make it to the final film," Leto told Telestar in 2017. "Hopefully, they will see the light of day. Who knows."

Leto, Robbie, and Joel Kinnaman are just some of the Suicide Squad cast members to express support for a streaming release of the so-called Ayer Cut that would restore at least the first 40 minutes of footage from his film. Ayer has in the past said that the director's cut is "almost complete minus some visual effects."

"Cut definitely exists - you'll need to ask @ATT and @hbomax to let it see the sunlight," Ayer tweeted over the summer, tagging WarnerMedia parent company AT&T and the HBO Max streaming service.

DC Films and Warner Bros.' James Gunn-directed The Suicide Squad, which is more reboot than sequel to Ayer's 2016 blockbuster, releases in theaters and on HBO Max on August 6.

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