Batman producer Charles Roven confirms that Suicide Squad will have a PG-13 rating as well as offers details about Jared Leto’s Joker and more.
You can watch Roven talk about Suicide Squad in the above video, with some of the text found below (via Collider).
On Jared Leto’s Joker:
“Look, you know, it was different, it was fun. The group first wasn’t sure because the AD’s had to call him ‘Mr. J’ to get him to come to the set [laughs]. And he did in many ways isolate himself from the rest of the group, but that’s really what his character was, the purpose of his character in many ways, other than when he was with Harley or trying to get Harley. It was very entertaining, it was fuel for a lot of good sport and a lot of laughs, and his isolation bonded the squad, and we wanted the squad bonded.”
David Ayer pitched the idea to do Suicide Squad:
“He had a close relationship with [Warner Bros. executive] Greg Silverman and Greg said, ‘He’s got an idea on Suicide Squad, he wants to come in and pitch it.’ Having a guy like that who’s been able to—all of his films have had a certain level of groundedness to them, really feeling very richly real. And so having that sensibility, which is along the lines of what we were talking about earlier how we like to have things grounded in science or whatever, I was very anxious to hear what his take was gonna be on Suicide Squad and I was very happily surprised, but it was right exactly in the pocket that we were looking for. Honestly that movie was essentially greenlit in the pitch meeting.”
On David Ayer being the writer and director for Suicide Squad:
Surprisingly, one of the things that is a natural benefit of having a writer-director is that when you meet with him, if he’s trying to meet with an actor and explain to them what the role’s gonna be, there’s a lot of confidence that the actor has that the man who’s telling him what’s it’s gonna be is gonna deliver because he’s both the writer and the director. So David was very fresh off the heels of a movie that he could show called Fury, which was a fabulous picture, and he was able to talk about these really—as he says ‘it can be fun to be bad’ and ‘just because they’re bad doesn’t mean they’re evil’, and so he was able to convince all of the actors that we went out to that he was gonna be able to make these characters so compelling that they would wanna be played more than once by these actors.”
On the atmosphere on set:
“I have to say, it was one of the most fun sets ever. I’ve been doing this for a while, and the camaraderie that was built on that set—everybody couldn’t wait for the next day to come back to work.”
Suicide Squad having a PG-13 Rating:
The intention of the film is definitely to be PG-13… We really want to make these films tonally consistent so that, as I said because this is a shared universe, at least our current thinking—and again, we’re not dealing in absolutes because while this is business it’s also a creative endeavor, so you want to leave yourself open to changing your mind, doing something different, being inspired, that’s the whole process of filmmaking is you have to allow for inspiration as well as having a road map for what you’re gonna do. So our plan right now is to make all these films PG-13. In some cases, you know, right there on the edge of PG-13, but still PG-13.”
What will surprise audiences the most?
“There’s a lot of characters in Suicide Squad, and I think you’ll be engaged with them. They all have fabulously different arcs, they’re all very individualistic, and I think that also they’re very, very human in their own dysfunctional ways. And I think that the personal individuals stories and how they relate to each other will be surprising.”
“Suicide Squad” has an August 5, 2016 release date directed by David Ayer starring Will Smith as Deadshot, Jared Leto as the Joker, Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, Cara Delevingne as Enchantress, Jai Courtney as Boomerang, Joel Kinnaman as Rick Flag, Viola Davis as Amanda Waller, Adam Beach as Slipknot, Karen Fukuhara as Katana, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Killer Croc, Jay Hernandez as El Diablo, and Scott Eastwood in an unknown role.
