While the upcoming The Suicide Squad is expected to be mostly writer-director James Gunn’s love child, Warner Bros. did have a single demand for the movie. As Gunn recently revealed during an interview for The New York Times, Warner Bros. always gave him a lot of breathing space to do whatever he wanted with the DC super-villain team. However, Warner Bros. did have one request of their own from the start: for Gunn to use Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn in his movie.

Gunn has been pretty vocal about how The Suicide Squad is precisely the movie he wanted to make, from script to editing. After David Ayer’s Suicide Squad was badly received, due in part to the movie undergoing a lot of editing at the studio’s request, fans were suspicious of all the freedom Gunn seemed to have while tackling the DC team. Even so, The Suicide Squad was finished without reshoots, which shows Gunn indeed had a lot of control on set. But now, it seems like Warner Bros. had one request, even if the studio was really open to Gunn’s input in the matter.

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Image via Warner Bros.

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As Gunn explains it, he knew from the start he didn’t want to make a sequel to Ayer’s movie and needed to do his own thing to make the film worth watching. Warner Bros. agreed to Gunn’s terms, even if they wanted Robbie’s Harley Quinn to be a part of the project. In Gunn’s words:

"I wanted to create what I thought of as the Suicide Squad. For me to react to David's movie would make it the shadow of David's movie. I wanted it to be its own thing completely. When Warner Bros. said they wanted me to do this, I watched the first movie for the first time, and I called them back and said, what do I have to keep from this movie? And they said, nothing. They said, listen, we would love it if Margot's in the movie but she doesn't have to be. You could come up with all new characters or you could keep all the same characters."

Robbie is not the only cast member brought back from Ayer’s 2016’s film. Jai Courtney's Captain Boomerang, Joel Kinnaman's Rick Flag, and Viola Davis' Amanda Waller are also back. Nevertheless, Gunn’s The Suicide Squad is not exactly a sequel, as the new project doesn’t even address Ayer's movie.

Gunn’s R-rated The Suicide Squad will be released in theaters and also be available for streaming on HBO Max on August 6.

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