The state of DC has been in disarray for over half a decade now. 2016 was the year that broke DC, and it never recovered. The release of Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice divided audiences early in the year and caused Warner Bros. to go into a complete panic over their plans for the DCEU. They grew increasingly distrusting of Zack Snyder’s direction for the upcoming Justice League movie and their cinematic universe. That, combined with a family tragedy, led to Snyder leaving and WB eventually hiring Joss Whedon to complete what ended up being a total mishmash of a movie in 2017. Before then, though, something similar happened with 2016’s Suicide Squad.
Although the film was largely complete by the release of Batman v. Superman, WB ended up re-editing the entire villain-oriented film in an attempt to lighten the tone and move away from the approach established by Snyder’s superhero fight night earlier that year. The result, similar to what would happen with Justice League the next year, was immensely disappointing. Suicide Squad was a mess of a movie that never really found its own personality.
Update September 13, 2023: This article has been updated by Ted Bajer with additional material to keep the discussion fresh and relevant with even more information.
Just as fans petitioned for, and then eventually got, the “Snyder Cut” of Justice League, there has also been a growing movement of people online who are loudly demanding that WB release director David Ayer’s original cut of Suicide Squad. With James Gunn and Peter Safran recently hired to head the newly-titled DCU, this demand for the “Ayer Cut” has grown even louder, to the point that Gunn even addressed it on Twitter. However, releasing the alternate director’s cut of Suicide Squad would be a mistake that would start Gunn and Safran’s reign at DC off on a bad foot. Here is why.
Repeating the Snyder Cut Fiasco
As excellent as Zack Snyder’s Justice League was when it eventually hit HBO Max in March of 2021, it has become increasingly obvious that the release of that cut of the film has done very little to build or reunify the overall DC brand. While a majority of the fans that pushed WB for the release of the film did so with nothing but good intentions, there’s no denying that a very vocal minority of the “Snyder Cut” online movement has been incredibly toxic and destructive to the DC brand. Instead of embracing Zack Snyder’s Justice League and being happy to have the completed film they’d been so excited about for so many years, some fans continued to push WB and demand that they scrap their entire DC franchise and return to the story Snyder was telling. Obviously, that never happened. But even as James Gunn takes over, some Snyder fans are protesting this new DCU in favor of their old guard.
The result of this has been an immense division of the DC brand. Some fans are sternly in the Snyder camp, and others can't wait for the Gunn-Safran reboot to drop. The fact is, DC is in a transitionary moment right now. Gunn and Safran have been hired to steer the ship of DC in a similar role to that of Kevin Feige over at Marvel. Their chief task right away is to refocus the DC brand and fanbase and move it forward in one clear and distinctive direction. If they were to go back and get caught up in the logistics of releasing Ayer’s cut of Suicide Squad, they would risk putting the entire brand back in the same confusing and divisive spot it has been in for the last six years.
It’s also worth noting that while Zack Snyder’s Justice League was generally very well received, it wasn’t the smash hit that many expected it to be on HBO Max. While it did have a respectable first week that pulled in 2.2 million streams from US households, those aren’t groundbreaking numbers by any means. The Batman still managed to double those numbers in its first week on the service earlier this year, even after its 45-day run in theaters.
If the Ayer Cut of Suicide Squad were to be released, it would certainly be a Max original. The interest in Ayer’s Suicide Squad is already much smaller than the demand for Snyder’s Justice League was, which makes it easy to see that a release of the director’s cut of Suicide Squad wouldn’t really perform all that well anyway. So, while that version of the film might be significantly better than what was put out in 2016, the chances of it actually gaining any traction are way too low for it to be worth releasing right now.
A Need to Move the Story Forward
As much as some people wish it wasn’t so, the Snyderverse, the continuity of Ayer’s Suicide Squad, and that era of DC are dead and should be left in the past. Gunn and Safran are caught between difficult groups of fans as they attempt to push their new franchise forward. But that doesn't mean they won't do their best to please them. David Ayer recently posted on X that James Gunn had told him that his cut of the 2016 Suicide Squad would be released, but that now wasn't the right time. Ayer said specifically that Gunn told him his cut "would have its time to be shared." But who really knows when that is?
The cynical answer is that if a version of the film is completed, Warner Bros. Discovery might release it on Max sometime in 2024 if the WGA and SAG-AFTRA Strikes go on and force more delays to the various Warner Bros. projects. It was after all the delay in productions from the COVID-19 pandemic that Warner Bros. released Zack Snyder's Justice League. Yet it is unclear if that would be in violation of any particular guild rules, so that might prevent the Ayer Cut of Suicide Squad from being released.
DC Needs To Move Forward
Is the Ayer Cut of Suicide Squad better than what was put in theaters? Ayer certainly thinks so. In fact, he said exactly that in his post on X. But that was over half a decade ago now. DC needs to move on. Even if some of the fans disagree, a bigger camp of media outlets, movie critics, and, yes, an entirely separate group of fans would rather see DC moving forward instead of back.
There has already been another take on the Suicide Squad brand with 2021’s The Suicide Squad, which was even directed by Gunn and likely contributed to him getting the top job at DC. That film was significantly more well-received than the 2016 rendition, and it has already spawned a very successful spin-off show with John Cena’s Peacemaker. There’s clearly much more potential in moving forward with that version of the Suicide Squad IP than in going back to try and fix what already failed over six years ago.
The story of DC needs to be pushed forward, both in a creative and a business sense. Gunn and Safran have been promising one cohesive story for the DCU moving forward. When Gunn released the DCU's Chapter 1 schedule back in January, he said that one of the biggest problems with DC is that it wasn't connected. And that he meant to join superheroes across movies and television. Going back and releasing Ayer’s cut of Suicide Squad doesn’t forward that story, so there’s really no point in doing it. Gunn even acknowledged this on Twitter when addressing the volume of “#ReleaseTheAyerCut” Tweets he has received. He said that while he hears and understands fans, “our initial focus is on the story going forward, hammering out the new DCU, & telling the Biggest Story Ever Told.”
DC needs new voices, ideas, and stories to grow the brand back into what it once was and what it could still be. If it gets too caught up in where it’s been before by trying to mend the mistakes of its past, then the brand will struggle to get to the place it needs to be. If Gunn and Safran want to re-establish the DCU with one single story to rival that of the MCU, it would be a huge mistake to go back and release the Ayer Cut of Suicide Squad.
While it’s admirable that fans want to see the original creative vision of the 2016 film, there are higher priorities for DC right now. The whole franchise needs to get back on track, and there are much larger fish to fry than Ayer’s Suicide Squad. The Suicide Squad branding has already been largely repaired by Gunn's The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker, so going back to fix the Ayer film would likely do more harm than good at this point.
If there ever was a time to release The Ayer Cut of Suicide Squad, it would be after Gunn's DCU has found its footing and generated enough brand goodwill to allow for an alternate take on the universe to be seen. Maybe in 2026, after the release of Superman: Legacy and for Suicide Squad's 10-year anniversary, the Ayer Cut can be released, and audiences can look back at what might have been. But now the priority is what can be.