In what’s probably the most unexpected news of the week, Warner Bros is in the process of trying to court Mel Gibson to direct Suicide Squad 2. Gibson has had a shotty track record in Hollywood, but the ambitious director is trying to make amends.
In 2006, Gibson has arrested for drunk driving and then proceeded to yell Anti-Semitic words while in the back of the cop car. That, and a few other instances of drunken rampages, Gibson was blacklisted from Hollywood. Ten years later he directed the critically acclaimed Hacksaw Ridge film and now Hollywood seems to be welcoming him back.
Warner Bros has been struggling with trying to find their footing with the DC superhero movies. As everybody knows, Marvel has found enormous success in crafting their cinematic universe of superhero movies. Warner Bros, the company who has the rights to distribute DC Comics movies, hasn’t been that lucrative.
Man Of Steel, Batman V. Superman, and most recently Suicide Squad have all been box office successes but panned critically. There’s a multitude of reasons as to why these films fail on a movie making level, but Warner Bros has been saying they’re course correcting the way they do things, and it seems to hire Mel Gibson could be a part of that.
The problems with Suicide Squad stem from its editing, pacing, characters, and plot. Gibson, despite his personal life, is a great director and can work well with an ensemble cast. According to Variety, Warner Bros has a few other names in mind for Suicide Squad 2 in case Gibson doesn’t work out. Zombieland‘s Ruben Fleischer and Warm Bodies‘ Jonathan Levine are in the mix, but Gibson is their number one pick.
The director of the first Suicide Squad, David Ayer recently wrote a letter that kind of seems like an apology for how the film turned out. It’s unknown what really went wrong with the film behind the scenes, though. It seems that Warner Bros liked how Gibson directed Hacksaw Ridge, and they feel he would be a good fit for the next Suicide Squad.
