Next year, David Ayer's Suicide Squad will introduce audiences to a new form of the comic book movie, centering a plot around a team of characters who are primarily known as villains instead of heroes. Of course, this isn't actually the only film in development to tackle this approach, as Drew Goddard has spent years trying to make a movie about Spider-Man's primary villains joining together to take down the web-slinger, forming the Sinister Six. Because Suicide Squad is coming out next year while Sinister Six remains in the development stages, you might think that Drew Goddard might be a little disappointed about the DC Comics film's release - but that isn't really the case. Why? He was taught to expects that someone in Hollywood will always be working on stuff similar to his own.
We've been hearing Drew Goddard talk about his Sinister Six movie a lot recently - as he's been on the press tour promoting The Martian - but it was while talking to IGN that he addressed comparisons between his movie and David Ayer's. Asked how he felt when he heard the news that Suicide Squad would be moving forward, the Cabin In The Woods writer/director explained,
I got a really good piece of advice when I was just starting out as a screenwriter, which was, whatever you’re working on, you will hear about three other things at the exact same time that sound exactly like your project – but don’t worry about it, because otherwise you’ll never get anything done. And I just always trust that we’ll make it unique. Things have cosmetic similarities.
"Cosmetic similarities" is actually a great way to describe the relationship between Sinister Six and Suicide Squad, because while the movies both do focus on teams of supervillains, that's pretty much where the similarities end. In the former, the antagonists are brought together through their shared hatred of Spider-Man and their aim to kill him, while the latter focuses on a team of incarcerated criminals who are forced into black ops work in exchange for reduced sentences.
But even beyond the radically different plotlines, Drew Goddard also sees another key difference between Suicide Squad and his Sinister Six movie: tone and vision. Because while both stories may be coming from the same medium, they're being brought to life by two very, very different filmmakers. Or as the Daredevil series creator put it,
I love [Suicide Squad director] David Ayer. I think he makes spectacular movies. But David Ayer is a very different filmmaker than I am and it’s nice because then you think, well, he’s going to make his movie and it’ll shine but it’ll be different. They can all co-exist.
Despite the fact that Sinister Six was being developed as part of the now-defunct Amazing Spider-Man franchise, the project is still alive and kicking, with Marvel Studios keeping it in the mix as a possible future direction for the Marvel Cinematic Universe version of the wall-crawling hero. Right now the film doesn't appear to be on any kind of development schedule, and no release date has been announced, but hopefully we'll hear more about it soon.
In the meantime, Suicide Squad will be arriving in theaters August 5th.
