Will Smith, who played the deadly assassin Deadshot in Suicide Squad, will not reprise his role for the sequel, which will be written and directed by Guardians of the Galaxy‘s James Gunn.
Warner Bros. hoped that Suicide Squad‘s two biggest stars, Smith and Margot Robbie, who played the Joker’s on-again, off-again girlfriend Harley Quinn, would both return for the Suicide Squad follow-up (let’s just call it Suicide Squad 2). Unfortunately, Smith and Warner Bros. couldn’t overcome scheduling issues and parted on amicable terms, Variety reports.
Robbie’s involvement remains up in the air. The actress is currently playing Harley in another DC Comics film, Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn), however, so she still has a strong connection to both the character and the studio. Other casting decisions have yet to be made.
Suicide Squad was written and directed by David Ayer, who also helmed Netflix’s Will Smith vehicle Bright, and arrived in theaters in 2016. It follows a group of imprisoned supervillains, including Deadshot, Harley Quinn, and other B-list DC Comics characters, who join a government black ops organization known as Task Force X in exchange for their freedom — provided they could survive a suicide mission.
Critics ravaged Suicide Squad — our own reviewer Rick Marshall called it “more sad than scary” — but the film made $746 million at the global box office regardless, so it’s clear why Warner Bros. and DC Entertainment committed to a sequel. The next Suicide Squad adventure is currently scheduled to debut on August 6, 2021.
Gunn joined the Suicide Squad sequel shortly after Disney and Marvel fired him from Guardians of the Galaxy 3 after right-wing activists uncovered a series of old, offensive jokes on Gunn’s Twitter account. Gunn, who got his start at Troma Entertainment, a studio known for its schlocky, off-color, and low-budget horror movies, had previously apologized for the tweets.
The Suicide Squad 2 sequel is being positioned as a soft reboot, and is said to feature a “mostly all-new cast of characters and actors.” Meanwhile, if you’re looking to get more of Smith in your life, his turn as the Genie in Disney’s live-action Aladdin remake is generating all kinds of buzz — and not necessarily the good kind.
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911
YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube's existing video format. That doesn't guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.
What is AV2, and why should viewers care?
YouTube is changing how its Home page works, giving viewers more control over what shows up there and making some of the app’s most-used sections easier to reach. Custom Feeds are now replacing the existing topic chips for eligible users, while YouTube is also testing a redesigned top bar on mobile that moves Subscriptions closer to the Home feed.
YouTube first started experimenting with Custom Feeds earlier this year, letting you type out what you wanted to watch and turning that request into its own stream of recommendations. Now, the feature is starting to look less like a side experiment and more like something YouTube actually wants people to use as part of their everyday Home page.