Where to watch Suicide Squad (2016)

Trivia & production notes

• Director David Ayer initially wrote Steppenwolf and Parademon aliens into the screenplay, with Enchantress controlled by a Mother Box opening a portal to Apokolips, but this entire storyline was cut before production began.
• David Ayer described the film as a 'Dirty Dozen with supervillains' when pitching the project to media.
• Tom Hardy left the role of Rick Flag due to scheduling conflicts with filming The Revenant, disappointing himself as he had liked the script.
• Jake Gyllenhaal, who had worked with director David Ayer on End of Watch, was offered the Rick Flag role that Hardy vacated but declined the part.
• Editor John Gilroy departed the project in early 2016, prompting editor Lee Smith to take over and create Ayer's director's cut from Gilroy's assembly footage with a militaristic tone similar to Black Hawk Down.
• Warner Bros. conducted reshoots written by Geoff Johns in 2016 costing approximately $22 million to compromise between Ayer's dark cut and the studio's lighter version, significantly exceeding the typical $6-10 million additional filming budget.
• The reshoots included an almost entirely different third act and rewrote scenes between Harley Quinn and the Joker to soften their relationship for teenage audiences.
• Zack Snyder filmed a scene with the Flash featuring Ben Affleck while shooting Justice League in London during Ayer's post-production work on Suicide Squad.
• Ayer's original director's cut ran approximately 143 minutes with only Steven Price's score and a linear scene arrangement, contrasting sharply with the studio's final version.
• The studio tested two competing cuts of the film—Ayer's somber version and a lighter cut made by an unknown editor—which scored nearly identically with audiences.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Suicide Squad (2016 film), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Rewritten for StreamShack; errors are ours — tell us about them.