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‘Suicide Squad’ Director David Ayer Wants Sequel To Be R-Rated

By Gregory Wakeman
Published on: 11:09 PST, Apr 14, 2016

Suicide Squad will be a PG-13 film when it is released in the summer. But director David Ayer has now admitted that he’d love the opportunity to make an R-rated Suicide Squad film. In fact, he wants fans to lobby for the sequel to be just that.

The writer and director made this admission to MTV while in attendance at CinemaCon to promote Suicide Squad. David Ayer explained that after he was brought on to the project the decision was quickly made by Warner Bros. to keep Suicide Squad limited to a PG-13 rating.

“For an R movie, you have to decide to do it right out the gate, and that was never the case here,” David Ayer insisted. “We were always going to hit the PG-13 rating. But the film is meant to be that. It’s got edge, and it’s got attitude. And it’s got its own voice… There’s a lot in the film that’s going to surprise people.”

While that will undoubtedly be the case, all of these scenes will still be restrained and contained by its rating, as only so much blood, gore, and cursing can feature in a PG-13 film.

But immediately after making the above declaration about Suicide Squad, David Ayer insisted that he wants its sequel to be much more excessive and outrageous. After being pointedly asked whether he is interested in an R-rated sequel, David Ayer declared, “It would be worth lobbying for.”

There’s every chance that Warner Bros. will green-light a Suicide Squad sequel, too. That’s all because of a little film called Deadpool, which, despite being R-rated, has so far grossed over $757.5 million at the box office. This makes it the most successful R-rated film of all time.

This was a huge surprise to box office experts and cinephiles. 20th Century Fox originally had such little confidence in a Deadpool film that they only gave it a budget of $58 million. To put that into comparison, another entry in the superhero genre Avengers: Age Of Ultron had a budget that was just under $300 million.

Director Tim Miller, screenwriters Rhett Resse and Paul Wernick, producers Simon Kinberg, Ryan Reynolds and Lauren Shuler Donner knew that in order to give the title character of Deadpool justice, the film needed to be R-rated so that he could be as offensive, outrageous, and hilarious as possible.

The results show that an R-rating is no longer as big of a risk as Hollywood has previously believed. In fact, studios are already looking at which of their properties could be turned into R-rated films. Warner Bros. may be quick to realize that Suicide Squad is just that, as it brings together the DC universe’s most heinous villains in one movie.

The first Suicide Squad film will see Will Smith star as Deadshot, Jared Leto as The Joker, Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, Joel Kinnaman as Rick Flag, Viola Davis as Amanda Waller, Jai Courtney as Boomerang, Jay Hernandez as El Diablo, Cara Delevingne as Enchantress, and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Killer Croc.

Of course, in order for Suicide Squad 2 to be R-rated, the original film has to be a box office success. And no doubt Warner Bros. won’t be quite as confident as they once were about Suicide Squad’s success. While the first trailers for the film have been met with a great response, the critical mauling of Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice and the fact that it only grossed $800 million when the studio expected it to take in over $1 billion means that there is a bit of uncertainty surrounding Warner Bros.’ extended universe, which includes Suicide Squad.

It’s up to Suicide Squad to reverse this trend, which it will try to do on August 5, 2016.

[Image via Warner Bros]

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