The Suicide Squad New Photos Debut Online

Warner Bros. and DC are taking their band of merry villains in a much different direction next summer, with the arrival of The Suicide Squad, from Guardians of the Galaxy writer and director James Gunn. After David Ayer's commercially successful but critically panned Suicide Squad in 2016, the studio is going to be rebooting the franchise, while also delivering a quasi-sequel, in the form of The Suicide Squad. With an August 2021 theatrical debut on the horizon, Empire is debuting some brand new images from the film.

A couple of new photos from The Suicide Squad appear in the upcoming issue of Empire, but they were released online a couple of days ahead of time. Along with the photos, Empire shared some quotes from Gunn in which he talks about his bold new film, including how it connects to the first Suicide Squad.

"Um, it's its own thing," Gunn told Empire. "It does not contradict the first movie, I don't think. It might in some small ways… I don't know…"

Gunn went on to explain how these characters in The Suicide Squad are different from those in Guardians of the Galaxy. Unlike the Marvel team, these villains are actually willing to kill one another over petty fights. With that difference in mind, Gunn was given full creative freedom by DC, allowing him to kill any character in the movie at any given moment.

"I think you know, from pretty close to the beginning, that all of the Guardians are good – apart from Nebula, who's the outlier," Gunn continued. "But in The Suicide Squad, some of the characters end up being good, some end up being terrible. They don't just get in fights and say they're going to kill each other, they actually do get in fights and kill each other. You really don't know who's going to live and who's going to die. I was given full freedom to kill anyone – and I mean anyone – by DC."

The filmmaker also defended Ayer's work as the director of Suicide Squad, saying that he did a great job casting and creating those characters.

"Listen, David Ayer's gotten trouble for the movie," he said. "I know it didn't come out how David wanted it to come out. But he did one really, really great thing, and that is he picked fantastic actors to work with, and he dealt with these actors in building their characters in a really deep and fearless way. It's something David definitely deserves to be lauded for, and it's definitely added to this movie."

Are you looking forward to seeing The Suicide Squad next year? Let us know in the comments!

The Suicide Squad arrives in theaters on August 6, 2021.