'Suicide Squad' baddies aim to save DC film ambitions

"Suicide Squad" arrives in theaters Friday with tremendous pressure to deliver on the promise of the DC cinematic franchise, which has stand-alone pictures planned featuring "Batman," ''Wonder Woman," ''The Flash," and "Aquaman" and their super team, the Justice League.

Director David Ayer initially thought he was making a "cool little side movie" with a bunch of B-list supervillain cult favorites, but it's become one of the summer's most anticipated films.

Ayer made his name with films like the gritty L.A. police drama "End of Watch" and the WWII tank film "Fury," and wanted to make sure he was viable in the industry's most popular genre too.

[...] he assembled a crack-team of actors and started making one of his movies, albeit with a PG-13 instead of an R-rating, to tell the origin story of why some of the deadliest meta-humans ended up working for the U.S. government.

Viola Davis was on board to play the shadowy government official Amanda Waller.

[...] rising star Margot Robbie agreed to portray the Joker's psychotic girlfriend, Harley Quinn — who became an immediate fan favorite after the studio teased footage last summer at Comic-Con.

The lineup is also quietly one of the most diverse superhero casts to hit the market, with Jay Hernandez as Diablo, Karen Fukuhara as Katana and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Killer Croc.

Little did Ayer know at the time that all eyes would be on this film to essentially prove the worth of Warner Bros.' big jump into the world of extended comic book universes, which Marvel and Disney currently rule with their Avengers films and standalones such as Iron Man, ''Thor and Captain America.

Associated Press Film Writer Jake Coyle wrote that the film "is to see the superhero movie reaching rock bottom, sunk by moral rot and hollow bombast."