David Ayer recently posted a lengthy and heartfelt statement on social media once more criticizing Warner Bros. for what they did to his planned version of Suicide Squad, before signing off by claiming it would be the last time he’d ever speak publicly on the matter.
Following the official announcement of Zack Snyder’s Justice League, many fans were crossing their fingers that Ayer would be afforded the same treatment to return to his maligned DCEU blockbuster and be given the opportunity to show the world what he had in mind before it was butchered beyond recognition by the studio. Of course, that never happened, even if the Ayer Cut would have been a lot cheaper and quicker to put together than Snyder’s four-hour epic, and the top brass have since washed their hands of the whole thing.
One of the more infamous behind the scenes Suicide Squad stories detailed how two separate edits were commissioned, and the one that scored better with test audiences was given the green light for release, even though neither of them were reflective of the project Ayer had signed on to write and direct in the first place.
In a new interview, producer Charles Roven recalled the post-production battles that blighted the Suicide Squad, even if he was inevitably reluctant to take sides.
“The interesting thing was, when we tested the Ayer version, to be honest, I can’t sit here and remember how we got to that edited version, who was editing that edited version, but it wasn’t Lee Smith. It was somebody else that came in. The studio version was also different editors as well. We tested both versions. They tested exactly the same. Because they tested exactly the same, David and the studio and ourselves, meaning Rich and I and the heads of DC at that time, Jon Berg and Geoff Johns, we all sat in a room and tried to come up with what would be the best of both versions. Obviously, the movie made a really nice piece of change. Audiences liked it enough for us to want to do a sequel. But it definitely wasn’t the exact vision of David, and it definitely wasn’t the exact vision of the studio.”
Even though Suicide Squad earned close to $750 million at the box office and won an Academy Award for Best Makeup and Hairstyling, it remains the lowest-rated installment in the DCEU’s history on both Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, and that’s something that was taken completely out of David Ayer’s hands. Unless something drastic changes, though, we’ll never find out how much better his cut of the movie really is.
