'Fury' and 'End of Watch' Director David Ayer Circling a 'Suicide Squad' Film

As Warner Bros. continues to build their stable of TV series based on DC Comics properties, their big screen universe is expanding, as well. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is on the way in 2016, and we know it will be followed by Justice League and a Shazam movie starring Dwayne Johnson. But one project that has been developing for years with a script by Justin Marks is Suicide Squad, based on DC's team of government-controlled antiheroes. A few months ago word broke that David Goyer (Man of Steel) was actively developing it, and now a director may have been found.

According to Variety, End of Watch and Training Day director David Ayer is circling the Suicide Squad gig, just one of many DC comics movies slated to hit screens between now and 2020. The studio correctly surmises that Ayer, who directed Brad Pitt's WWII thriller Fury, would be a good fit for the edgier material, but as of now it's unclear where the negotiations with him stand. The Suicide Squad are basically like DC's version of the Dirty Dozen or The Expendables. They are a bunch of bad guys and antiheroes forced by the government to take on nearly-impossible missions as expendable assets. Their roster has shifted a lot over the years but some members have included Captain Boomerang, Harley Quinn, Deadshot, Bronze Tiger. Their handler in the government is Amanda "The Wall" Waller, who was played by Angela Bassett in Green Lantern and has been rumored to appear in Batman v Superman. Could we be looking at a potential crossover here? The team has made frequent appearances on Arrow, and was the subject of the animated film, Batman: Assault on Arkham.

With an Aquaman film also in the works and now Suicide Squad, Warner Bros. is starting to fill out their slate, but it's still a little surprising to they're moving in this direction (and Shazam, too) with the major projects hardly settled. Or is this an indication that things have progressed further along than we think?