At one point, we thought that Suicide Squad 2 would move into production by the end of 2017. However, it looks as though there’s a much longer wait in store.
Variety's Justin Kroll recently tweeted that the cameras won’t roll for the sophomore movie of the DC Extended Universe's Worst Heroes Ever until the fall of 2018 at the earliest. The delay isn’t due to a script issue or the absence of a director; it’s due to one actor's busy schedule.
Will Smith (Floyd Lawton, aka Deadshot) is currently committed to Ang Lee's Gemini Man and Guy Ritchie's Aladdin, and he can’t begin shooting for Suicide Squad 2 prior to the date mentioned above. The actor is such a big name in the industry, and Deadshot is a key character, so there's no way that Warner Bros. would move on without Smith. Check out Kroll's tweet:
So hearing at the earliest, SUICIDE SQUAD 2 won’t go into production until fall 2018 because of Smith’s schedule with ALADDIN and GEMINI
"” Justin Kroll (@krolljvar) August 29, 2017
Will Smith’s busy schedule is the reason for the Suicide Squad 2 production delay. (Photo Credit – Warner Bros.)
This pretty much falls in line with something actor Joel Kinnaman (Rick Flag) said back in June. He mentioned that filming for the sequel to David Ayer's 2016 blockbuster was planned to begin "sometime in 2018". We assumed that meant sometime in the first half of the year, considering the amount of attention the project was getting.
At the moment, Suicide Squad 2 lacks a director, as frontrunner Jaume Collet-Serra passed on the job. If the project waits until the fall to head to production, it's unlikely that it will hit theaters much before 2020. It's unclear whether this means that either of the two spinoffs (The Joker/Harley Quinn movie and Gotham City Sirens) might arrive prior to the actual sequel.
