Tom Hardy Explains Why He Left SUICIDE SQUAD
David Ayer's Suicide Squad is getting some serious press these days, and I continue to believe that there's more excitement about this than there is about Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice. Suicide Squad sounds like it could be excellent, and it certainly has a solid cast attached to it. But there was a time during which that cast was even better, and that's when Tom Hardy was attached to play Rick Flagg. The actor had to drop out of the project before filming began, and there were some rumors at the time that his reason for leaving was that he wasn't happy with the script.
In a recent interview with Collider, Hardy himself went on the record about Suicide Squad and tells us why he left in his own words (keep in mind that the word "alley" apparently means "right up there with the best"):
“Warner Bros. is my home studio and I love them so I was really bummed out. I wanted to work on that and I know the script is really fucking alley and I also know what’s gonna happen with The Joker and Harley Quinn in that; I won’t give away too much…it’s fucking alley. And that whole territory is something that I would certainly—I mean, everybody loves The Joker. Everybody loves The Joker. Will Smith is a dope guy, but everybody loves The Joker and that’s gonna, I think, be a very important film for fans.”
So those rumors didn't have any merit, then?
“There’s a very practical element as to why I’ve missed out on that foray, which is because Alejandro [G. Inarritu] has overshot by three months in Calgary, so we’ve got to go back out to Patagonia or Alaska to continue shooting The Revenant which has turned into a much bigger beast than we thought, but that also looks exceptional...Literally we wrapped in Calgary for now until we go back in July. It would have smashed the two, I would’ve had a beard. It was just not gonna happen so I got ass-slammed technically out of Suicide Squad, gutted, so I had to hand it over to Joel Kinnaman, who will do an amazing job. It’s just I got bumped out, and that’s cool that’s the way it is.”
The Revenant (which sounds unbelievably awesome, by the way) has definitely gone way over its planned shooting time, but as Hardy himself says, Warner Bros. is his home studio. Let's pretend those early rumors were true and he really wasn't happy with the drafts of the script that he'd seen: do you think he'd actually say that about one of his home studio's films that's currently in production, especially when the DC Cinematic Universe has so much riding on Suicide Squad and Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice to start them off on the right foot with audiences? No way. So while it'd be nice to just believe him when he says these things, it's always important to remember that there are a lot of angles and politics that come into play with statements like these. The set photos from Suicide Squad are intriguing, so it's safe to say we're all hoping for the best from that film.