James Gunn will being production on his DCEU movie, The Suicide Squad, this month, with actors like Jai Courtney reprising their roles from the previous Suicide Squad film. Shooting will reportedly get underway in Atlanta, Georgie starting next week and continue for three months before heading to Panama for an additional month.
Plot details for The Suicide Squad, which Gunn will directed based on his own script, are mostly being kept under wraps for the time being. However, it's been reported that the story will revolve around Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) sending the Skwad to Panama to deal with an extraterrestrial monster. Margot Robbie is also expected to return as Harley Quinn in the film, making The Suicide Squad the third DCEU installment she's appeared in after David Ayer's Suicide Squad and Cathy Yan's Birds of Prey (which opens next February).
Warner Bros. confirmed with ComicBook.com that The Suicide Squad begins filming this month (aligning with previous reports on the matter), but refrained from revealing the shooting locations. Elsewhere, during an interview with Collider Live, Courtney revealed that he's leaving for the production this weekend. The actor played the Australian bank robber Captain Boomerang in Ayer's film, but has yet to confirm if the character's trademark mutton chops - not to mention, his fluffy pink unicorn doll - will be back in The Suicide Squad.
While it's not strictly a "reboot" (as producer Peter Safran has called it), The Suicide Squad isn't exactly a regular sequel, either. Most of the film's cast members are brand-new to the DCEU, including Idris Elba, Daniela Melchior, David Dastmalchian, Flula Borg, Taika Waititi, Storm Reid, and Peter Capaldi. Gunn also has his own distinct sense of humor and different filmmaking style than Ayer does, which means The Suicide Squad shouldn't really feel like its predecessor, either tonally or even visually. But at the same time, the movie will continue to build upon the previously-established mythology of the DCEU and bring back a number of characters (Joel Kinnaman's Rick Flag included).
It's no secret that Ayer's Suicide Squad was a box office smash that bombed with critics, so that helps to explain why Gunn isn't completely scrapping what came before with his film. Most likely, The Suicide Squad will acknowledge the DCEU's past while charting its own course forward, much in the same ways that Aquaman and Shazam! did. DC's movies in general have found their footing by not copying the Marvel Cinematic Universe formua, and there's little reason to expect that to change now that Gunn has been handed the reins to the worst heroes ever.
Source: ComicBook.com, Collider Live
