James Gunn has revealed a production poster for his DCEU movie, The Suicide Squad. Prior to being rehired to direct Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 last year, Gunn signed on to write and direct a partial continuation of David Ayer’s Suicide Squad for Warner Bros. Far from being a “total reboot” (as producer Peter Safran once called it), Gunn’s The Suicide Squad will include a handful of characters from Ayer’s DCEU film, including Amanda Waller (Viola Davis), Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney), and Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman). At the same time, the Squad will introduce several new members to the team.

Unlike Ayer’s movie, The Suicide Squad promises to truly live up to its name and kill off multiple Squad members over the course of its runtime; in fact, a whole team of them might be dead by the time the first act is done. This further explains why the film’s cast is being extra cagey about revealing who they’re really playing, lest fans guess ahead of time which of their characters are expendable based on their importance in the original DC comic books. Even so, the latest artwork for the movie makes it clear just how bad the Squad’s chances of survival actually are.

In a post on Instagram, Gunn revealed The Suicide Squad poster designed by John Sloboda to mark the recent completion of production (see below). As the filmmaker explains in his post, this is an unofficial poster in the sense that it won’t be released in theaters or used to market the movie in a formal capacity.

For the most part, the weapons depicted on The Suicide Squad poster are petty generic and difficult to connect to a specific comic book character. The exceptions, of course, are Captain Boomerang’s weapon of choice (hint: it’s in his name) and Harley’s iconic mallet, which are featured prominently among the pile of guns, grenades, bullets, and blood in this art. Other characters heavily rumored, but not yet confirmed, for The Suicide Squad include Peacemaker (John Cena… maybe) and Vigilante (Idris Elba’s alleged role), in addition to equally obscure villains like Polka-Dot Man (David Dastmalchian). However, there’s not really anything here that firmly confirms their involvement, nor that of other rumored Squad members like Arm-Fall-Off-Boy (who Nathan Fillion insists he is not playing) and King Shark (a role Steve Agee has been linked to, despite Gunn’s recent denial).

Again, the secrecy around The Suicide Squad is reasonable; as this poster makes all too clear, there will be blood in the film, and possibly enough to land the movie an R rating (much like last month’s Harley Quinn-led Birds of Prey). The rumors are similarly promising since they suggest Gunn is really leaning into the weirdness of The Suicide Squad property and giving it some proper stakes by making it unclear who, exactly, will make it out of the film alive. Gunn got better at weaving together dark humor with emotionally rich drama over the course of the first two Guardians movies, so that too bodes well for his efforts here. With a little luck, then, The Suicide Squad will deliver the experience fans of the original comic books have always wanted, but didn’t get from Ayer’s adaptation.

Source: James Gunn/Instagram

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