SUICIDE SQUAD Reshoots Amp Up The Humor

SuicideSquadB

Trailers can sometimes be deceiving. Exhibits A & B: those fun fan-made edits that turned Sleepless In Seattle into a horror movie and The Shining into the feel-good event of the year.

The recent, well-received 2nd preview to Warner Bros. DC villains movie Suicide Squad isn’t that dishonest, but it set an expectation for audiences different enough from the original cut that WB has approved reshoots reportedly at a cost of “tens of millions of dollars”.

That 2nd trailer (see here)…

…was cut to Queen’s song “Bohemian Rhapsody”. It set a much lighter tone than what we’ve been getting from director Zack Snyder‘s DC Universe so far (and Batman V Superman in particular), and fans quickly hoped that Suicide Squad would be DC’s version of Guardians of the Galaxy (having the same early-August release date seemed to also suggest as much).

But according to a source for the web site Birth.Death.Movies, the Queen-fueled trailer “did not represent the film as it then existed,” adding that “every joke in the movie is in that trailer.” So, given the trailer’s overwhelming positive response, reshoots are underway to bring more jokes, more banter, and the lighter tone that audiences loved.

Reshoots are generally a sign of trouble for a movie, particularly when they’re at this scale, but this looks to be an exception to the rule. With Suicide Squad, nothing is being changed with the structure of the narrative. From the perspective of writer/director David Ayer and the WB, this isn’t happening because the film isn’t working. It’s a proactive response to shift the tone and give fans what they want.

To get a sense of what was originally envisioned, watch the first teaser (below) that debuted at the 2015 Comic-Con last summer. My hunch is that the tone of the final film will be an equal blend of these two previews.

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