While director Zack Snyder is finally in post-production on Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (which seemed like it was filming for an entire year), director David Ayer (Fury) is currently gearing up to start shooting what will be the next Warner Bros. DC Comics adaptation in their new series of inter-connected franchises: Suicide Squad. For those unfamiliar with the source material, it’s essentially a supervillain team-up story revolving around a group of captured bad guys who carry out highly dangerous (some would say…suicidal) missions for the government in exchange for commuted sentences.

This film’s Suicide Squad will be compiled of the following: Will Smith as Deadshot, Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, Jared Leto as The Joker, Jai Courtney as Boomerang, Cara Delevingne as Enchantress, and possibly Joel Kinnaman as Rick Flagg (Tom Hardy was previously attached to play Flagg, but dropped out due to scheduling issues). The team will be overseen by Viola Davis as Amanda Waller, who’s kind of like the Suicide Squad’s Nick Fury, and Jesse Eisenberg may or may not reprise his BvS role as Lex Luthor in the film.

harley-quinn-joker-alex-ross
Image via Alex Ross

As production is gearing up to begin, Ayer has been offering brief teases on Twitter by way of some Suicide Squad set photos, and yesterday he revealed a tiny bit about what we can expect from Leto’s Joker. This is no doubt the most iconic character of the bunch, so Leto has a herculean task ahead of him in making The Joker his own. But when asked on Twitter to describe Leto’s take on the character in one word, Ayer responded with simply “majestic.” Alright, that's a nice start. Additionally, Robbie spoke a bit about the film’s tone to MTV:

“I think on a scale of like, The Dark Knight is here and The Avengers is here, I think it’s more on the Dark Knight side of things.”

That’s really no surprise given that Man of Steel solidified Warner Bros.’ superhero movies as more serious and dramatic when compared to Marvel Studios’ output, which embraces the colorfulness of the comic books.

But that doesn’t mean Suicide Squad will be devoid of passion for the source material, as Davis recently outed herself as a comic book fan in an interview with THR:

“As a comic book and Wonder Woman fan, I love the whole DC Comics universe. I traded comic books as a kid so all of that appeals to me. When you dream about being an actor as a kid, that’s what you dream about. That’s like play acting: being the superhero, getting the gun; it plays into that fantasy. How to Get Away with Murder changed my exposure. I don’t know if it changed the quality of roles as much as it changed the exposure. I mean certainly Amanda Waller is a fabulous character.”

While production will obviously be shrouded in a fair amount of secrecy, Ayer is prone to teasing fans on Twitter with behind-the-scenes photos from his films, so I’ll be curious to see if Warner Bros. continues its long-lead marketing strategy that it enacted with Batman v Superman. For Snyder’s film, fans were provided with official images of the actors in costume well before filming ended, so hopefully the same thing occurs on Suicide Squad.

Check out the Suicide Squad set photos below, via Ayer’s Twitter, including one from today in which the time has come for Leto to shed his gloriously long locks of hair. Again, filming doesn’t start until April so they’re not super revealing, but they’re fine teases of what’s shaping up to be a fascinating film. Suicide Squad opens in theaters on August 5, 2016.

https://twitter.com/DavidAyerMovies/status/572475580962242561
[EMBED_TWITTER]https://twitter.com/DavidAyerMovies/status/572416755890454528[/EMBED_TWITTER]

 

[EMBED_TWITTER]https://twitter.com/DavidAyerMovies/status/571699077777371136[/EMBED_TWITTER]
[EMBED_TWITTER]https://twitter.com/DavidAyerMovies/status/568067250667663360[/EMBED_TWITTER]

 

[EMBED_TWITTER]https://twitter.com/DavidAyerMovies/status/566644269822119936[/EMBED_TWITTER]
[EMBED_TWITTER]https://twitter.com/DavidAyerMovies/status/562721450365558785[/EMBED_TWITTER]

 

[EMBED_TWITTER]https://twitter.com/DavidAyerMovies/status/553717465419489281[/EMBED_TWITTER]