USA Today is previewing the upcoming DC Universe movies today and have debuted a new Suicide Squad photo, which you can view in the gallery below. Following 2013’s Man of Steel, the new films will kick-off with the Zack Snyder-directed Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice on March 25. Next up is Suicide Squad, directed by David Ayer and opening on August 5, followed by the Patty Jenkins-directed Wonder Woman on June 23, 2017. Those films will culminate in Snyder’s Justice League Part One on November 10, 2017 before the DC “Phase 2” begins.
“I love Batman and Superman and Wonder Woman, but having Flash and Aquaman and Cyborg and to see them all standing together, it’s a pretty dorky and cool experience for me,” says Snyder about introducing the Justice League characters in Dawn of Justice. “Basically every one of those characters has a logo that you would recognize without them standing there, and that’s a hard thing to achieve in this pop-culture world. We have history to draw on, but we also have these new frontiers to forge.”
“There’s a whole world of fantasy in comic books, and if you just focus on one small portion of it, you’re never going to get the full magic of it,” Henry Cavill, who plays Superman, says. “Now that we’re introducing all these other characters and really building the universe to a far larger place than just a simple alien’s life on Earth, it really makes it extraordinarily interesting.”
Snyder adds: “It’s our belief and our goal to honor the legacy of the studio with a batch of films that speaks to that world.”
Regarding Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman, who has a small role in Dawn of Justice, Snyder adds: “She’s a powerful female superhero, which is a thing we haven’t had for a while. She’s a piece of IP that basically exists in pop culture in a way where every kid’s got a Wonder Woman T-shirt and they don’t really know why. I want to give the why back to that.”
Ayer, meanwhile, says that Jaret Leto in Suicide Squad is “the king of Planet Joker.”
The director added that filming Ben Affleck’s Batman cameo in Suicide Squad was one of his favorite days. “We made him fight. He’s awesome (as Batman). … You really sense that but for the grace of God he himself would be doing some really foul stuff out in the world.”
Regarding that film, Affleck adds: “It felt like I have such a cool cousin. This thing that is so awesome is somehow related to me, and that was really exciting because it started to feel like a constellation of things, and I’ve never had that feeling.”
