James Gunn has admitted that The Suicide Squad’s King Shark was the hardest CGI character he had ever been faced with. No stranger to bringing CGI characters to the big screen, Gunn’s previous work on the Guardians of the Galaxy films had seen him turn a gun-toting talking racoon and a walking tree into some of the most beloved characters in the MCU. When Gunn jumped across from Marvel to work on the DC property, he had taken much of what he had learned and applied it to The Suicide Squad which featured two main CGI characters in his iteration of Task Force, King Shark and Weasel.

Based on the DC comic character created by Karl Kesel and artist Tom Grummett, King Shark AKA Nanaue made his debut appearance in 1994’s Superboy comic run. While the character has previously appeared in live-action in the CW Arrowverse’s The Flash and also features as a lead character in the animated Harley Quinn series, The Suicide Squad marks his first appearance in a live-action feature film. With motion capture provided by Steve Agee, Gunn has previously admitted that he cycled through several potential voices before finally deciding on screen legend Sylvester Stallone to voice to the character.

Related: How Strong Is King Shark? How He Didn't Die In The Suicide Squad

Getting King Shark’s voice right does not seem to have been the only tricky part Gunn face in bringing the character to life. Speaking with Collider, Gunn admitted that getting the character took a lot of work, and a complete redesign, to get right. Check out what Gunn had to say about the character below:

It was really hard, man. It was really hard. So, I've done furry characters who used to be pretty hard, but are much easier now. And I've done wooden characters, which are pretty easy. But to be able to do the sharkskin was really tough. I mean, we went through a lot of versions of trying to get sharkskin to look real, and it was hard. Then finally, we get the sharkskin looking as good as we can, and we built King Shark. I always knew he was like this bad bod. We designed him. But then he came out. There was just something about his belly. It was too light, white. It didn't look real. He had too much of pecs and that looked too mammalian.

I actually broke him down and said, "We have to break him apart and put him back together again, because he's not working." Luckily, Framestore, who developed King Shark, and then Weta also did a lot of shots with King Shark, they both worked together to create this character that looked as real as he does now. But it took a lot of work. It took a lot of moving forward and backtracking, one step forward, two steps back, over the design.

King Shark The Suicide Squad

Gunn certainly wasn’t the only one to encounter difficulties in bringing the character to life. In 2016 original Suicide Squad director David Ayer admitted that he had originally planned to include the character in his film, but ultimately decided against it as he felt the CGI involved would be too difficult to get right. Instead, Ayer decided to use Killer Croc, achieving the character’s look through prosthetics rather than CGI.

Thankfully when Gunn decided to tackle the character, however, he spent the time and effort necessary to get King Shark’s design to where it needed to be. Not only was the result visually spectacular, but Gunn’s take on the character has also quickly made him a fan favorite. While Gunn is now planning to return to Marvel and work on other CGI characters like Rocket and Groot for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3., DC fans are keeping their fingers crossed that The Suicide Squad won’t be the last they see of Nanaue on the big screen.

Next: Nanaue: King Shark’s Real Name Meaning Explained

Source: Collider

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