Unlike in 2016’s Suicide Squad, Batman won’t show up in James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad, but we will still get to spend time with some members of his rogues gallery. Along with Margot Robbie reprising Harley Quinn, we’ll also meet David Dastmalchian’s Polka-Dot Man and Daniela Melchoir’s Ratcatcher II. But as it turns out, The Suicide Squad squeezed in yet another Caped Crusader adversary in the form of Julian Day, a.k.a. Calendar Man.
This has been revealed thanks to a new featurette for The Suicide Squad. Towards the beginning of the video, as we see quick cuts of many of the characters appearing in the next DC Extended Universe movie, we get a brief shot of Calendar Man, with those tattoos of abbreviated months around his forehead being a dead giveaway.
Calendar Man is being played in The Suicide Squad by Sean Gunn, who is also appearing in his the superhero flick as Weasel, one of Task Force X’s many members. Gunn is experienced with tackling dual roles in his brother’s comic book movies, because in addition to playing Kraglin in the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, he’s also the on-set Rocket Raccoon, who is later voiced by Bradley Cooper. It’s unclear who the criminal is besides Calendar Man in that shot, but they’re both locked up in Amanda Waller’s prison, and it looks like he’s trying to get her attention. Bad move, Julian; it’s unlikely she wants to hear anything you have to say, and you’ll almost certainly come out of this in a world of hurt.
You can watch The Suicide Squad’s new featurette in full below, which is packed with new footage and soundbites from various cast members and James Gunn.
The Suicide Squad marks Calendar Man’s first time being depicted in live-action; there had talk about featuring him in the Fox series Gotham, but nothing ever came of that. In the animated realm, the character was recently voiced by David Dastmalchian in Batman: The Long Halloween, Part One and the soon-to-arrive Part Two, and has also appeared in Batman: The Brave and the Bold, the Harley Quinn animated series and the latter three Batman: Arkham video games. While Calendar Man has been around since 1958’s Detective Comics #259, he’s gained popularity in recent decades from the original Long Halloween story, where he was depicted as a Hannibal Lecter-like inmate at Arkham Asylum who Batman came to for assistance in tracking down the Holiday serial killer.
Don’t expect to see that much of Calendar Man in The Suicide Squad given that he’s not part of the main story, but it’s good to know about another Batman villain who exists in the DCEU. Along with the aforementioned characters, we also saw Killer Croc, Deadshot and The Joker in the first Suicide Squad movie, Deathstroke popped up in both versions of Justice League (and would have been the main villain of Ben Affleck’s version of The Batman), and Birds of Prey featured Black Mask and Victor Zsasz as its main villains.
The Suicide Squad charges into theaters and HBO Max for a 31-day window (on the ad-free plan, which you can sign up for now) on August 6. Keep checking back with CinemaBlend for all the biggest updates concerning upcoming DC Comics movies.
