For a long time, it seemed like Zack Snyder’s original vision for Justice League, a.k.a. The Snyder Cut, actually being released was a pipe dream. That changed last month when it was announced that The Snyder Cut will be released on HBO Max in 2021, which subsequently prompted speculation about if David Ayer’s original vision for fellow DCEU movie Suicide Squad, a.k.a. The Ayer Cut, could receive the same kind of treatment.
While an official decision on The Ayer Cut hasn’t been made one way or the other, Tony Goncalves, the CEO of AT&T’s Otter Media division, which is the group in charge of HBO Max, has made it clear that what’s being done with The Snyder Cut is not intended to set a precedent. During a recent interview, when the difference between fandoms like The Snyder Cut and fandoms centered around properties like Harry Potter and Friends (which haven’t been as demanding), Goncalves noted:
There’s different types of fandoms. There’s the fandom you just described, and there’s other fandoms. My reference to the fandoms is the fact that we’re in a space where consumers are loud. Consumers guide, and we absolutely have to listen as industry. I had a boss that once said, ‘Industry and consumers aren’t always aligned, but consumers do tend to win.’ It’s a fine balance. And I think when it comes to video, when it comes to entertainment, when it comes to content, consumers have never had more choice, and they’ve never had more of a voice. But that doesn’t mean that we will go and invest our dollars in every single fandom that exists.
Tony Goncalves then added in his interview with The Verge that while The Snyder Cut is an example of fandom speaking up, and he and his fellow HBO Max bigwigs listening, that doesn’t mean they’ll redo every movie that’s ever been made. So while The Ayer Cut could one day make its way to the masses, don’t look at it as an absolute certainty right now.
Over the last several months, David Ayer has talked more about how the theatrical cut of Suicide Squad significantly differed from what he’d shot, with the filmmaker saying that the negative reception to Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and the success of Deadpool leading to the tone of the movie being altered. While the decision to release the Ayer Cut is ultimately out of his hands, Ayer did say it’d be “cathartic” for him if the public got to see Suicide Squad the way he intended to present it.
One thing that might help The Ayer Cut’s chances of being put on HBO Max is that David Ayer says that his vision would be “easy to complete.” While The Snyder Cut obviously won’t cost as much as filming an entirely new Justice League movie from scratch, it’s also not a cheap endeavor either, with HBO Max possibly spending more than $30 million on it. So would The Ayer Cut’s price tag would be smaller?
Along with being tonally different, among the things that the Ayer Cut version of Suicide Squad could feature include more scenes of Jared Leto’s Joker, Enchantress’ plan involving Justice League villain Steppenwolf and a fight between Katana and the rest of Task Force X, to name a few. I suspect that HBO Max will wait to see how The Snyder Cut performs before making a decision on The Ayer Cut, but who knows, maybe the streaming platform will announce some Suicide Squad-related news before the year is over.
Either way, keep checking back with CinemaBlend for all the latest and greatest updates on DC movies. Be sure to look through our handy guide detailing what the DCEU has coming up, which includes James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad dropping on August 6, 2021.
