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The Suicide Squad: Superman almost appeared in DC comics sequel, James Gunn reveals

‘There was a time when I thought the Suicide Squad should fight Superman’ director said

Peony Hirwani
Monday 16 August 2021 12:23 BST
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Suicide Squad 2021 trailer

James Gunn has revealed that he considered including Superman in The Suicide Squad.

During an interview with Script Apart, the writer and director disclosed that “there was a time when I thought The Suicide Squad should fight Superman.”

However, the filmmaker ultimately chose to feature alien conqueror Starro instead.

“[Starro is] a character I love from the comics. I think he’s a perfect comic book character because he’s absolutely ludicrous but he’s also very scary in his own way,” Gunn said.

“What he does is scary. He used to scare the crap out of me when I was a child, putting those face-huggers on Superman and Batman and stuff. So I thought he was one of the major, major DC villains that was probably never going to be put into another movie,” he added. “And if they did, they would do it like, the black cloud version of Starro. Not a giant walking starfish, a kaiju that is bright pink and cerulean blue, just ridiculously big, bright bad guy.”

However, Starro wasn’t the only thing that stopped the Guardians of The Galaxy producer from featuring Superman in his film.

“At the time, there were a lot of questions like, ‘Who is Superman in the DCEU? Is this movie outside the DCEU?’” Gunn said. “I just didn’t want to deal with it all that much.”

The Suicide Squad is a loose sequel to 2016’s Suicide Squad, and focuses on a team of DC Comics supervillains, including Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), Peacemaker (John Cena), and Bloodsport (Idris Elba).

The film is out in cinemas now.

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