David Ayer is pushing for an “Ayer Cut” of 2016’s Suicide Squad

Just last week, the internet saw a real-life unicorn: WarnerMedia announced that the Snyder Cut, a long-fabled edit of 2017’s Justice League that preserved director Zach Snyder’s original vision, was going to come out on HBO Max, the company’s upcoming streaming service. Frankly, this was nigh-miraculous. The internet had been demanding for Warner Bros. to #ReleaseTheSnyderCut for years, but for a big studio to actually commit the millions of dollars it will take to get the movie into shape and put it out there for all to see? That was new.

And it may not be the last we see of this kind of thing. Buoyed by the Snyder Cut news, the hashtag #ReleaseTheAyerCut started to pick up steam on Twitter, referring this time to director David Ayer’s original vision for 2016’s Suicide Squad, a movie that, like Justice League, was pretty widely panned upon release, in this case for being shallow, boring, disjointed and generally crappy. Might it, like Justice League, get another shot?

Again, before the Snyder Cut news, I would have said, ‘Hell no,’ but now…anything seems possible. And David Ayer himself is behind the idea:

“My cut would be easy to complete,” he said. “It would be incredibly cathartic for me.”

“My cut isn’t the apotheosis of filmmaking. It’s simply better than what the public has seen.”

Both Justice League and Suicide Squad went through some heavy revisions before making it into theaters. The situation with Justice League was especially thorny. Zach Snyder had to leave partway through filming because of a family emergency, with Avengers director Joss Whedon called in to complete the film. A bit of studio meddling later, and we had a movie, for better or worse.

The situation with Suicide Squad is a bit more straightforward. Ayer made the movie, the studio snipped and tightened and loosened and added until it was satisfied and released the finished product to the masses, many of whom were pretty vocal about hating it. It’s not an ideal situation, but it’s hardly uncommon in Hollywood. Battles between creatives and executive are pretty standard issue.

In the past 20 years — pretty much since DVDs became the standard movie format — director’s cuts have become pretty popular too, with creatives able to go back and deliver the movie they really wanted to make. Some director’s cuts have been great and some you watch and realize why cuts were made, but I guess it makes sense to start releasing them on streaming, since that’s now becoming the standard movie format.

So yeah, bring all the deleted scene with Jared Leto’s Joker that you’ve got. Why not?

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