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The Ayer Cut of DC’s Suicide Squad is officially dead. After eight years of attempting to get his version of Suicide Squad re-released under a director’s cut banner, the filmmaker has given up and washed his hands of DC entirely. Even though the #ReleaseTheAyerCut movement didn’t reach the height of momentum that Snyder’s did, even Ayer was hopeful as recently as December.
“You know, there are a lot of people that are invested in certain narratives that don’t want it to see the light of day,” Ayer told Deadline. “So there’s an immense political headwind against it because if that cut were made public, the cowardliness and the whole just general shittiness of how the film’s been treated, and how the actors have had this great work that they’d done taken away…That narrative blows up once people see the movie.”
That level of optimism officially died as Ayer went public Wednesday stating that he’s “done with DC.”
The SnyderCut movement was something to behold. Full of frenzied fans, Twitter bot accounts, and harassment against executives, the online attention got the job done. The film landed on the former HBO Max, though it didn’t exactly shatter any records. Ayer has attempted something similar with his much-maligned, but Oscar-winning (Best Makeup and Hairstyling) Suicide Squad from 2016. ComicBook posted now-deleted Tweets where Ayer compared the treatment of his film to him being shot “JFK style,” referencing the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
When asked if there was a chance Ayer would return under the new DC Studios regime of James Gunn and Peter Safran, the director said he was done with all of that.
“Nope. Done and done. Very sad,” he said. “You’ll be fine after a good cry. I feel healthier. It’s a wound that needs to heal.”
Ayer’s Suicide Squad is one of the worst received DCEU entries–with both Rotten Tomatoes scores abysmal. That same year, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was released to a similar reaction. Looking back, the one-two hit is where DC’s then-planned release schedule started to fall apart at the seams.
The director had wished Gunn and Safran the best going forward and all the success, but mentioned he’s “good” if he sits this out.
