Once upon a time, a man named Tom Hardy was cast to play a character known as Rick Flagg in a movie called Suicide Squad, an antihero team-up of incarcerated supervillains announced as part of DC Comics newly-anointed “Cinematic Multiverse”. I’m assuming you knew this. Then, about a month ago, news hit the web that Hardy had dropped out of the project, and Warner Bros. was eyeing Jake Gyllenhaal to take on the role, but a deal never came to fruition. I’m assuming you knew this as well.
Cutting to the chase now, The Wrap is reporting Warners has found their replacement for Hardy in RoboCop star Joel Kinnaman, though the studio has yet to confirm the news. However, if The Wrap is correct, Kinnaman will join a cast that includes Jared Leto, Will Smith, and Margot Robbie — and potentially Viola Davis and Jesse Eisenberg — in a film written and directed by David Ayer (Fury, End of Watch), and for as much as I don’t care about the majority of the comic book movies hitting theaters these days, that sounds pretty damn awesome to me.
Hardy was forced to drop out of the project due to scheduling conflicts, as he is busy filiming The Revenant for Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and will be busy handling promotional duties for Mad Max: Fury Road, which hits theaters in May. I’d have loved to see him in Suicide Squad, but I’m also stoked to see what he does in Inarritu’s next project.
The role of Rick Flagg in Suicide Squad appears a pretty coveted one, as Flagg is the leader of the titular squad the film portrays. Kinnaman is an actor I’m relatively unfamiliar with, but that might not be a bad thing. No doubt the role was in capable hands for the brief time Hardy was attached to the project, but I enjoy seeing fresh faces on-screen and being lured in by the lesser known. After all, there was a time we didn’t really know Tom Hardy, and look where he is now. Suicide Squad will begin production in April and is slated for an August 5, 2016 release.
