David Ayer’s Suicide Squad Originally Had Ties to Zack Snyder’s Justice League

David Ayer’s 2016 DCEU film Suicide Squad was originally meant to include concrete ties to Zack Snyder’s Justice League.

Speaking on Twitter (below), Ayer said a big blow to Suicide Squad (which was heavily criticised by critics and fans, with IGN giving it a 5/10), was that direct links to Justice League were removed prior to production.

“The script issue was having Steppenwolf and the Parademons stripped out prior to production,” Ayer said. “Enchantress was under the control of a Mother Box and opening a portal to Apokolips.”

The script issue was having Steppenwolfe and the Parademons stripped out prior to production. Enchantress was under the control of a mother box and opening a Portal to Apokalypse. This was all cut early in prep. That was a hard loss. https://t.co/0szGMlyjWf

— David Ayer (@DavidAyerMovies) March 17, 2023

The inclusion of these other major DC characters and elements would seemingly have made the story of Suicide Squad (and perhaps Justice League) very different, but “this was all cut early in prep”, Ayer said. “That was a hard loss.”

Justice League was released one year later to middling reviews (IGN called it “sloppy but entertaining”), but while Suicide Squad was somewhat abandoned by DC — essentially ret-conned thanks to (now DC Studios co-CEO) James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad — Justice League went through a somewhat messier evolution as fans demanded Snyder’s original vision be released.

Though it eventually was (and IGN said it was great), Snyder’s place in the DC films space has seemingly come to an end, as DC Comics chief creative officer Kim Lee said in July last year that Justice League: The Snyder Cut would likely be the director’s final entry in the franchise.

Now led by Gunn and co-CEO Peter Safran, the newly dubbed DCU is seemingly moving on from almost everything that came before. That being said, Snyder did recently tease further shenanigans with a “full circle” Darkseid announcement.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer and acting UK news editor. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.