James Gunn's 'The Suicide Squad' Is A "Total Reboot," According To Producer Peter Safran

Last week, the best news of the year came with word that Disney and Marvel Studios had reversed their decision to remove James Gunn as the director of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. The filmmaker will return to the franchise that he originated in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but before that, James Gunn will have to make good on his deal to enter the DC Extended Universe with The Suicide Squad.

The Suicide Squad has been referred to as the sequel to the 2016 movie Suicide Squad, but according to producer Peter Safran, we shouldn't be thinking of this movie as Suicide Squad 2 at all. While we've heard rumblings that this will be a soft reboot of the franchise that brings some bad people together to do some good, Safran calls The Suicide Squad a "total reboot."

Speaking with JoBlo, Peter Safran first addressed how easy of a transition it will be for James Gunn to jump from DC back to Marvel, and he also confirmed that The Suicide Squad will shoot before Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3:

"It was all handled incredibly elegantly, and everybody knows on both sides that Suicide Squad is the priority today. He'll finish that movie, and then everybody knows that his next film will be Guardians. It's the best of all possible both worlds, I think, for fans and for James Gunn himself."

But fans have been wondering exactly what we can expect from The Suicide Squad. There were rumblings that an entire new roster of characters would be introduced for the movie, but staples like Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn and Will Smith as Deadshot would still be involved. But now that Will Smith has been replaced by Idris Elba and it's somewhat up in the air as to whether Margot Robbie will actually make an appearance, we're not sure what to expect. But here's how Safran described the movie when he was asked how excited fans should be for it:

"First of all, we don't call it Suicide Squad 2 'cause it's a total reboot. So it's The Suicide Squad, and I think people should be extremely excited about it. It's everything you would hope from a James Gunn script and I think that says a lot and that promises a lot and I know that we will deliver a lot."

A total reboot, eh? So does that mean this has no narrative connective tissue to the original movie? Does it take place outside of the DC Extended Universe? A more interesting approach would be to have this movie take place in an alternate DC Universe where even characters who have already been introduced are played by different actors. That would be something the Marvel Cinematic Universe hasn't done yet, and it could become a DC Comics movie trademark to dabble in a variety of DC Comics universes. Either way, it sounds like this will stand alone from what happened in the first Suicide Squad. Hopefully we'll hear more soon.

The Suicide Squad is slated to hit theaters on August 6, 2021.