Suicide Squad 2 Will Have Same Streaming Release As Wonder Woman 1984
The Suicide Squad will have the same streaming release as Wonder Woman 1984. Based on the DC Comics title about a team of anti-heroes, Suicide Squad arrived in theaters in 2016 and took the (somewhat) dark road to $746 million at the worldwide box office. But despite those more-than-healthy numbers, the narrative around Suicide Squad became all about how it was a compromised work that failed to bring new life to the DCEU.
Despite the negativity that still surrounds the first Suicide Squad, DC is now bringing back some of the movie’s characters (including Harley Quinn) for the do-over/sequel The Suicide Squad, with Guardians of the Galaxy mastermind James Gunn at the helm as writer and director. Like every other big movie set to arrive in the coming years, uncertainty has swirled around the Suicide Squad follow-up as release dates are constantly being shuffled in response to the on-going COVID pandemic. Indeed, doubts about the future of the theater-going experience in a COVID world recently led Warner Bros. to the drastic step of announcing a simultaneous theatrical and streaming release for another big DCEU tentpole film, Wonder Woman 1984.
The decision to put out the next Wonder Woman movie on HBO Max and in theaters at the same time (at least in the U.S.) indeed rocked the movie industry, leading to speculation about other studios following suit and adopting the model. Now it’s been confirmed that Warner Bros. at least will continue with the release plan they concocted for Wonder Woman 1984 by doing the same with other upcoming blockbusters, including The Suicide Squad. Like Wonder Woman 1984, the movie will be available on HBO Max for only one month after its release. See the streamer's exciting video announcement about the big move in the space below:
The above video indeed reveals coming HBO Max streaming releases for a lot of much-discussed movies, including Dune and The Matrix 4, as well as lesser titles like the Sopranos prequel film The Many Saints of Newark (which of course belongs on HBO anyway). Obviously, HBO Max already has a healthy relationship with DC as it’s also set to release the long-awaited Snyder Cut of Justice League. HBO Max would presumably also be the home of any alternate cut of Suicide Squad that might be whipped up, though the clamor for such a cut has reached nothing like the volume that was achieved by Snyder fans before his version of Justice League was finally given the go-ahead.
In the absence of a director’s cut of Suicide Squad that resurrects David Ayer's original, supposedly uncompromised vision, fans of the DC comics title can at least look forward to a Gunn-directed second chance at bringing the characters to life on the screen. And now those fans can also look forward to watching The Suicide Squad at home on the same day as its planned theatrical release. It remains to be seen how long Warner Bros. will continue with this approach, but with COVID vaccines set to arrive, it seems there’s at least some hope the pandemic that necessitated the drastic shift in release plans could soon be a thing of the past. But after getting a taste of streaming blockbusters released without an artificial window, will fans want to return to theaters even after COVID has become a memory?
Source: HBO Max/Twitter