Gavin O’Connor Explains Why DC Rejected His ‘Suicide Squad’ Script

With Gavin O’Connor’s “Warrior” recently celebrating its tenth anniversary, we recently sat down for an interview on The Playlist Podcast to talk about the writer-directors standout sports drama. And while the focus was on “Warrior” and its potential television spinoff, the conversation did turn to past and future projects: including a discarded adaptation of “Suicide Squad” and an upcoming drama with O’Connor’s “Mare of Easttown” collaborator.

Before James Gunn was attached to direct the sequel-slash-reboot of David Ayer’s 2016 film, O’Connor had been asked to write a script for a “Suicide Squad” movie. Originally, the studio had wanted something a little darker in tone, and O’Connor had been tasked with creating something serious. “What happened there was I wrote a deal to write a script, and they knew what I was writing. At that level, with those kinds of movies, with that budget, no one’s just going off and writing something without walking them through what the movie’s gonna be,” the director explained. “And everyone was cool with it.”

But when O’Connor was in the final stages of the scriptwriting process, there was a regime change at DC Films, and suddenly the studio was asking him for a distinctly different take than the one he was writing. “What happened was during the latter part of writing the script there was a whole regime change at DC, and when that happened, they wanted it to be a comedy,” he recalled. “And I’m like, ‘i’m not writing a comedy.‘ I mean, It [was] fun, but it’s not a yuk-fest. And the new regime wanted a different movie than I was writing.”

Asked if he’s seen the new “The Suicide Squad” movie by James Gunn or has any other comic-book characters in mind, the answer was a firm no. “I have no interest [to see it], to be honest,” he said, and as for additional comic book movies, he said, “I’m just doing my own thing.”

Since that experience, O’Connor acknowledges that he’s more focused on original projects. After working as an executive producer on Brad Ingelsby’s “Mare of Easttown” (he was originally supposed to direct the entire series but bowed out due to COVID-19 concerns), O’Conner has found himself finding new projects to work on with his sometime collaborator. “Ingelsby, who created ‘Mare’ and wrote my last movie, ‘The Way Back,’ he and I are writing a movie together now,” he said.

O’Connor describes the film, titled ‘Here We Are,’ as about a “dad, his daughter, and then his granddaughter” that is set in the music world and features a trio of characters who are trying to reconnect with one another. While not much else is said about the script, the description of the movie as a family drama —and the presence of Ingelsby — certainly suggest a film more in line with their previous Ben Affleck-led production.

Listen to the whole conversation below.