Every day the future looks brighter and brighter for the DCEU. Wonder Woman and Justice League both look amazing, the Bat Family properties are back on track, and Hacksaw Ridge's Mel Gibson even recently entered talks to possibly helm Suicide Squad 2. On that note, the director recently opened up regarding his potential involvement in the sequel, and while he admitted that he's not confirmed as the movie's director just yet, he has had many conversations about where to take the story and where it can go from here. Gibson explained:
I don't know. I just met some guys about story points. It's not a done deal or anything but it's just fun to shoot the bull you know? When it comes to a story. I love doing it. And if we can elevate any kind of concept, it's good.
Look, Mel Gibson has been doing this for a long time, so there was virtually no chance of him guaranteeing to ET that he would sign on to Suicide Squad 2 or not. You play coy with this type of information when you're on a red carpet. All we can confirm is that he has met with people at DC about working on the project, and if nothing else, he seems genuinely excited about the possibility of cracking the story.
At this stage, we need to approach this situation with a certain degree of cautious optimism. Mel Gibson seems interested in working on Suicide Squad 2, but DC doesn't have the best track record of keeping filmmakers locked in on projects. The Flash has notoriously lost two directors over the course of the last year, and The Batman only recently managed to get Matt Reeves back onboard after the Planet of the Apes director dropped out of the director's chair -- himself a replacement for Ben Affleck, who similarly dropped out of the role. Let's hope things aren't quite as turbulent for Gibson in the coming months.
That said, if DC and Warner Bros. manage to lock down Mel Gibson as the director of Suicide Squad 2, I think it's safe to say that the film will be in excellent hands. Gibson is a quintessentially old-fashioned director, and he will bring some vital filmmaking talents to the project if he signs on the dotted line. For starters, he uses as many practical effects as he possibly can, and he's magnificent at milking a small budget for all it's worth. That could allow DC to craft a much smaller scale Suicide Squad movie that embraces the darker and more gritty aspects of the source material. That's a lesson from the Deadpool school of thought.
Beyond that, Mel Gibson has an easily discernible knack for storytelling, and Hacksaw Ridge proves that he hadn't lost a step in recent years. In fact, during CinemaBlend's recent interview with Hacksaw producer Bill Mechanic, he explained that Mel was the perfect choice for the recent WWII epic because he knows how to tell a properly balanced three-act movie. The original Suicide Squad suffered from a number of pacing and story issues, so having a filmmaker at the helm who knows how to adhere to that structure will be nothing if not beneficial.
Check out a quick clip of Mel Gibson's chat with ET below to hear what he has to say about his current involvement in the project:
We will bring you more information related to the future of the Suicide Squad sequel as more updates related to the project become available to us. The film is currently in development at Warner Bros.
