I agree. I think this has about 0% chance of being made.
If they can't get Supes right, why would they waste time/money on the suicide squad?

Oh, and not to be one of THOSE kinds of nerds, but the pic above ISN'T of the Suicide squad. Those guys are The Rogues, who are all Flash Villians. The Suicide squad has dudes like deadshot, bane and other losers. Just HAD to point that out!

My guess it will be animated. And will try to capitalize on their Justice league cartoon. They well have a couple tie in episodes where they have to team up, then their own movie will come out. Btw, the picture you put up, you sure thats suicide squad. While Mirror master and Captain Cold both were members at one time or another, i dont remember them ever being in the squad at the same time, and i dont ever recall Weather Wizard or Heat Wave ever being part of the team

Go tell it on the mountain!

Seriously, why is this being announced before a Wonder Woman movie, a Flash movie and an Aquaman movie? I'm not even going to pretend they can do a Justice League movie right now.

“then it is frankly amazing these people can put on their pants in the morning without accidentally strangling themselves.”

Well said. There is a reason Marvel hasn’t mentioned making a Thunderbolts movie… because it’s a dumbass idea. Even though Marvel has its head up its ass with a lot of things they have been doing a bang up job with their movies.

"But it would absolutely flop at the box office because mass audiences don't know about these characters."

This from the guy who can't stop posting Watchmen news? Ask any friend of yours who doesn't read comics who Dr. Manhattan is. ;)

Also, one word: Blade.

I imagine this will be like Jonah Hex and fall outside of DC's grand movie plan (if it in fact ever gets made at all). It's a high-concept (villains as heroes!) that Hollywood can understand. It'll probably have nothing to do with the comic, star B and C-level actors, and come out in the dumping grounds of late summer/early fall.

Oh, guys. Clearly you're forgetting that Hollywood cares not a WHIT for the source MATERIAL. They care only for the source CONCEPT.

They'll do to this what they did to "Wanted".

To whit:

They'll utterly remove the costumes, and the villains will only have POWERS that they used in villainous ways to get incarcerated in the first place.

To be realistic, they'll all look like Abercrombie & Fitch models wearing fucking Prada leather jackets (coughWolverinemoviecough) or whatever.

One of them will be a 'redeemable' character who was 'only' a super-thief (like the Pied Piper but without any of that fussy, messy, being-gay-ness) who falls in love with one of the supervillains who doesn't SEEM to be a bad guy (hence he can fall in love with her) but ends up betraying him (shock! dismay! plot twist!), and then redeeming herself in the end by doing something good (coughWantedmoviecough).

The person running the Suicide Squad, who works for the government and is obviously a good guy, turns out to be a supervillain himself (or herself), just using other super-baddies to do their bidding. The redeemable villain (Pied Piper/Capt. Boomerang/whoever) will therefore convince some of the other villains to take down this 'bigger' baddie, thereby inadvertently doing good, which they will benefit from, thereby seeing that being good has its advantages too. But in an epilogue we'll still see that they like pick pockets or something in their new roles of taking down African despots or something.

THAT's the script we're going to get, THAT's what Hollywood types think of when you present them with a movie idea.

I honestly think this has a pretty good chance of happening. The concept is wide open enough to introduce people to characters that don't require a convoluted backstory, it's broad enough to allow for the aforementioned love story (or something like it), and could potentially be a franchise in and of itself. It doesn't require the characters to be introduced in the superhero movies. It doesn't even require superheroes.

And can't you already see the producers talking to "Entertainment Weekly" or one of the other glossies thinking they're being cool and talking directly to 'the fans' by being 'hardcore' and saying something like "This franchise is so extreme and intriguing because anyone can die--any one of the characters might be the next to go because it's the SUICIDE Squad, y'know? It's not called that because they bake cookies", or some such thing, and then the EW writer will make a baking-cookies joke and everyone will be fooled into thinking this will be cooler than it actually will be.

The studios look at these movies as: what's the franchise possibility? How much will it cost to produce? Who can we get to be in it? How broad of an audience will see it/how many demographics does it cross over into? What are the integrated marketing possibilities? Is it a relatively fresh concept? What will the ancillary product market for this be?

Since most of these questions can be relatively-easily answered (and the bottom line won't be that expensive--they can get teen stars and TV actors for most of the roles and only pony up for one A-or-B-list 'asses-in-seats' actor/actress (coughAngelinajolieinWantedcough)), I'd say this has more of a chance of happening than Supermax or even the more-expensive-and-daunting properties like Wonder Woman. Why do you think Jonah Hex is happening before fucking Green Lantern?

the best Warners can do is Jonah Hex and Suicide Squad?

add to the list of never-mades:

* Superman / Batman (which has a Times Square "marquee" in the background of I Am Legend... that shit made me laugh so hard when i saw it)

* Justice League

this just proves that Warner's doesn't know what to do with dc. for the only way the movie would do well is if the could get the okay to have oracle in it or maybe the bat rogues who were members but that will not happen though it would be interesting to see some actor as Deadshot and Amanda Waller the leader of the squad.

Wow...you guys pretty much summed it up...especially the pants strangling comment. I gurantee if it does get made it will be exactly as B.E. described....just throw in the fact that none of the villians will be allowed to curse or smoke or have sex and no way in hell will they release a movie with the word suicide in the title(gotta get the kids in the seats with that PG13 rating)and you've got the WB seal of approval! I for one cant wait to pick up my Dr. Light Taco-Bell cup...it makes the soda rapealicious!!!!

I read (or at least used to) comics and even I don't know who the eff these guys are. Good luck making that into a movie...

Yeah, Poe Ghostal got at the heart of it. I am sure they are seeing this as "You know, like Watchmen!"

Please no, they'll end up putting everyone in X-Men leather and spit out bad badass lines with a cigar chopping Deadshot. I can already feel the tears!

there are no "well known" villains in the suicide squad

@JobSquad - actually - that was the latest Suicide Squad from the "From the Ashes" arc. (Deadshot is actually in the picture.)

I don't really see the argument that people won't go see it because they don't know the characters. It's not like "Wanted" was a well known property, it didn't bomb. Good looking cast + cool trailer = possible hit.

They let the Justice League movie die in committee like an anti-free-speech bill on the floor of Congress, and they give us THIS in its place? You've got to be kidding me.

Besides, with every Superman film featuring Lex Luthor and the Batman films regurgitating all the villains that ALL DIED in the previous Batman films, how are they going to find any "well-known" villains?

Yeah. That's why the convicts from the Dirty Dozen film were introduced in actual goddam war movies... Come on!

Didn't they just announce Green Lantern for Dec. 17, 2010?

I also read a couple of weeks ago that the Flash was being fast-tracked (no pun intended).

Who said that Warner is putting every movie on hold?

Warner did put out the greatest Batman movie ever and the Watchmen are already getting rave reviews. V For Vendetta was a freaking awesome movie.

If you are only going to focus on Catwoman and Superman Returns, then.....

X-Men 3 sucked, the Punisher sucked, the sequel sucked, Ghost Rider sucked, Daredevil sucked, the Fantasitc Four sucked, the Fantastic Four 2 sucked even more, Elektra sucked, the first Hulk movie sucked, Spider-Man 3 sucked, Man-Thing sucked so bad they never even released it. And, from the looks of it, Wolverine is going too suck.

That's a whole lot of suck from Marvel.

But, Marvel knows what they are doing and Warner is clueless?

@robots

When the first two comments were made, there was a different pic up for the article... That or Rob has made me and another poster go crazy...

Yeah i am leaning towards the second option as well

I'm with Poe Ghostal; to the general public, there's a lot unknown about even the iconic superheroes. Iron Man? I think before the movie, some people were under the impression he was a robot or something. Will Joe Anyman know that Captain America is Steve Rogers? Or that his enemy is the Red Skull?

I wonder how many people who saw Spider-man really knew who the Green Goblin was prior to that.

I bet a number of people who saw Batman Begins had little clue about who the Scarecrow or Ra's al Ghul were, and if they did, a fair bet is that they learned from Batman: The Animated series. Those who didn't were probably wondering where the Joker, Penguin, Riddler, and Catwoman were. Those are Batman's villains, right?

And does Superman fight anyone besides Lex Luthor?

I think if they use the movie to introduce the characters they're using-- I could see an opening credits montage showing each committing villainy with their gimmicks and being captured-- and treated this as their story, rather than being picked off from other franchises, it could work.

After all, every hero was an unknown at some time. And I'm sure that goes double for many of their villains.

But moreover, it's what the story does with them. If they spent to much time dwelling on their unshown history instead of what they're doing here and now, as the Suicide Squad, then yeah, it probably wouldn't do so well.

--LBD "Nytetrayn"

Oh, and I wonder how many people who didn't stay through the credits of Iron Man know who Nick Fury is. Hell, I bet some who did still don't.

--LBD "Nytetrayn"

B.E.—I am intrigued by your post and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Seriously, though, I can see that happening...chillingly, rather like in the early-mid 90s, after the first two Batman movies did well, so they decided the best way to cash in on the trend was to run the property into the ground making it just like everything else, and then wonder why the hell people stopped buying it.

One thing I will say about Hollywood...at least they don't produce musical propaganda about tractors, or something.

Sorry, but you're way off base on this one.

Let's think about a few movies based on comic books that nobody but hardcore comics geeks had read, that failed because "mass audiences don't know about these characters."

[b]300[/b] was based on a graphic novel most people who don't regularly read Topless Robot have never heard of. It grossed around $450 million.

[b]Men in Black[/b] was published by a label so obscure it had to be bought out by another indie label before it was big enough to be bought out by Marvel. It grosses about $250 million, and the sequel made another $200.

Both films were not just financial successes but cultural touchstones.

Then there's Road to Perdition, The Mask, Hellboy, Blade, Sin City, The Crow, From Hell, A History of Violence, and American Splendor.

But, hey, you know what everyone's heard of? The Fantastic Four. That's a guaranteed success for any studio, right? Or Brenda Starr...everyone's heard of Brenda Starr! Did you even remember there was a Brenda Starr film?

But a limited-run series from the 80s with characters that nobody outside the comic book store had ever heard of...that's a surefire failure in your view, right? Like Suicide Squad. Or, say, The Watchmen.

Isn't the guy to the right of the center guy a He-Man villain?

First of all I agree that there are more lucrative ventures in the DC agenda that need to be pursued. Second, am I the only one that thought Aquaman was fucking retarded until Batman Brave and Bold single handedly rocked my preconceived notions about him. And finally, David Horenstein say what you want about most of Marvel's "movies" over the years, but don't you dare talk about my Wolverine.

Yeah, I have to say arguing against the possible success of this film due to the obscurity of the characters is just silly, based on the way that Watchmen has been able to garner so much heat and attention from a property that virtually only comic geeks (like myself) have even a passing knowledge of.

This is actually something I've been wondering for awhile, being a huge fan of the Squad: could a movie work? I think it could, albeit in a likely much-altered state, like the Wanted comparison B.E. made (of course, Suicide Squad was good to begin with. Wanted was just Fight Club with supervillains, and Fight Club sucks as it is).

I think Suicide Squad represents a distinct possibility to do something that WB probably wants to do: save Catwoman as a potential franchise. Obviously, it can't be Halle Barry, but they could probably find a reasonably popular, incredibly hot actress who shows up in Maxim or something like that a lot, thereby silencing the fanboys and exciting the general male audience. Not to mention that the presence of Catwoman as a major character is probably the only thing that's going to make a concept like Suicide Squad moderately palatable to the female audience.

Of course, that depends on what happens with the third Batman film, whether Catwoman's tied into it, and whether WB wants to keep it separate from other DC franchises. If they're as supportive of tying the franchises together as they've claimed lately, there's room for another Bat-villain. The Squad needs a traitor on the team, because hey, it's the Squad, and Scarecrow fits into that role perfectly. Cillian Murphy may not really be a name, but Scarecrow's been in both Batman movies and would definitely be a draw.

Aside from all of this, I think Squad's doable for a few other reasons. First of all, Deadshot's marketable. It's a shame he doesn't have a recognizable costume to make into a t-shirt (although you could make a target logo out of the telescope sight on the mask, and that'd look just fine on apparel in a Hot Topic), but all the adolescents and aging fanboys with arrested development still wearing Punisher and Venom shirts would flock to Deadshot like they do to bad metal bands and crates of Mountain Dew. That's the crowd Watchmen's banking on with Rorschach.

Secondly, it doesn't have to be an ultra-expensive film, because it's not Batman. You could probably produce for as much as your average Jason Statham film, and you could get a decent action director like Louis Leterrier for a reasonable price, and in doing so be ensured of a product that's going to satisfy enough people for good word-of-mouth and DVD returns. In fact, just have Statham be Captain Boomerang, have him be the villain-with-a-heart on the team, and there's your draw.

Thirdly, since it's Hollywood and they don't mind changing the racial backgrounds of characters to suit their needs...Jet Li as Bronze Tiger. There's your star, there's your justification, there's your movie.