James Gunn Explains The One Thing Original Suicide Squad Did "Really, Really Great"

It's not a sequel. It's not not a sequel, so what is James Gunn's Suicide Squad movie? Gunn gave us a hint of what we can expect from his movie when it drops late next year in a new interview with Empire, and heaped some praise on David Ayer, who put the original Squad together. Warning: your favorite character may not make it to the end of the movie.

"It's its own thing," Gunn said of his movie. "It does not contradict the first movie. I don't think. In some small ways... I don't know."

While Suicide Squad's status as a sequel or not-a-sequel doesn't seem to have weighed heavily on Gunn's mind while making his movie, he was thinking about the groundwork laid by director David Ayer.

"Listen, David Ayer's gotten trouble for the [first] movie," Gunn told Empire. "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."

Ayer laid good groundwork for Gunn, and DC gave him the green light to do as he wished with the Squad. Gunn spoke again about something he recently addressed on Twitter, too: how much danger the Squad members are in.

"They don't just get in fights and say they're going to kill each other, they actually do get into fights and kill each other. You don't really 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."

While it seems unlikely that Gunn would kill off someone like Harley Quinn, who is currently one of DC's biggest properties thanks in part to actress Margot Robbie, that seems to be what Gunn was signaling. And if she's on the chopping block, you know Polka-Dot Man is, too. The Suicide Squad is currently set to release on August 6, 2021.