Nathan Fillion joins the cast of James Gunn’s Suicide Squad reboot

SAN DIEGO, CA - JULY 21: Actor Nathan Fillion attends the #IMDboat At San Diego Comic-Con 2018: Day Three at The IMDb Yacht on July 21, 2018 in San Diego, California. (Photo by Tommaso Boddi/Getty Images for IMDb)
SAN DIEGO, CA - JULY 21: Actor Nathan Fillion attends the #IMDboat At San Diego Comic-Con 2018: Day Three at The IMDb Yacht on July 21, 2018 in San Diego, California. (Photo by Tommaso Boddi/Getty Images for IMDb)

Nathan Fillion, beloved by nerds for starring as Capain Mal Reynolds in Firefly and beloved by nerds’ mom for starring as mystery novelist Richard Castle on Castle, has a new gig. According to Deadline, he’ll appear in James Gunn’s upcoming reboot of Suicide Squad.

Well, it might be a reboot. Basically, Warner Bros’ first swing at a Suicide Squad movie failed horribly, so they’re giving Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn a crack at another movie that salvages a couple of the things that worked from the first one — Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, Viola Davis as Amanda Waller — and jettisoning pretty much everything else. It’s kind of a remake, kind of a reboot, kind of a sequel…whatever, the important thing is that Nathan Fillion is in it somewhere.

Who will he play? We don’t know. Comedian Steve Agee recently came aboard as King Shark, and if they’re going with that deep a cut, pretty much anybody in the DC catalog is a possibility. Also, David Dastmalchian is playing a character named Polka-Dot Man. The hell is Polka-Dot Man?

Maybe we’re getting ahead of ourselves. The premise of Suicide Squad is that the American government puts together a team of former supervillains to pull off a nigh-impossible job in exchange for their freedom, or at least their charges being reduced. In the comics, the team members shift constantly, so there’s plenty of room to play in the movie adaptations.

Fillion has worked with Gunn before, as the lead in his 2006 horror comedy Slither and as the voice of a random inmate in Guardians of the Galaxy. We might be looking at a random cameo here, or maybe he’ll play…Onomatopoeia, a supervillain who says sounds out loud. Calling it now.

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