This news may not be particularly surprising, butThe Suicide Squadhas officially been rated R by the MPA. On May 12, the official C.A.R.A. Film Rating Bulletin revealed the ratings and reasons for the upcoming James Gunn feature, among many other movies. Officially,The Suicide Squadis rated R for “strong violence and gore, language throughout, some sexual references, drug use and brief graphic nudity.”
Things might be official now, but we had expected for the movie to get ahard R rating. Gunn has been adamant that the movie would be rated R, and the popular red band trailer that was released provided a sneak peek at the extreme violence that was to come. When the lastSuicide Squadmovie was released in 2016, it came with a PG-13 rating as Warner Bros. was still reluctant to produce any R rated comic book movies, but the success ofJokerhas helped convince the studio how lucrative it can be.
Written and directed by Gunn,The Suicide Squadis not really a reboot, but not really a sequel to the 2016 movie by David Ayer. It doesn’t necessarily cancel out the events of that movie, though it won’t directly acknowledge them either. The new movie does feature some returning characters as its biggest link to the prior movie, including Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, Viola Davis as Amanda Waller, Joel Kinnamn as Rick Flag, and Jai Courtney as Captain Boomerang.
Meanwhile, an ensemble cast of new characters round out the rest of the movie. This includesJohn Cena as Peacemaker, Idris Elba as Bloodsport, Sylvester Stallone as King Shark, Peter Capaldi as the Thinker, David Dastmalchian as Polka-Dot Man, Daniela Melchior as Ratcatcher 2, Michael Rooker as Savant, Pete Davidson as Blackguard, Sean Gunn as Weasel, and Flula Borg as Javelin.
In the movie, a group of imprisoned supervillains at Belle Reve penitentiary are selected to become members of Task Force X for a chance at early freedom. They’re assigned to destroy Jotunheim, a Nazi-era prison and lab which held political prisoners and conducted experiments. Don’t expect everyone to make it to the end of the movie alive,given how violentwe can expectThe Suicide Squadto be.
Cena will be starring in his ownPeacemakerseries onHBO Maxin addition to appearing inThe Suicide Squad. Gunn has teased that other characters from the movie could also be showing up in the series. Now in production, it would seem that thePeacemakershow will be just as violent asThe Suicide Squad, if not more so. In a recent tweet, Gunn revealed how exploding a prop dummy on set was so bloody and realistic that it had a producer concerned that someone had been killed on set.
“Last night we exploded a building and a dummy was standing in the doorway and for a full five seconds our producer, Simon, who didn’t know the dummy was a dummy, thought we accidentally killed a guy. I’m not kidding,” Gunn tweeted last week.
The Suicide Squadis set to be released in theaters and on HBO Max on Jul 29, 2025. Cena’sPeacemakerspinoff series doesn’t yet have a premiere date set, but it’s expected to begin streaming onHBO Maxin early 2021. This news comes to us fromScreen Connections.
