Last month it was reported that the latest Warner Brothers outing into the DC comic book movie universe was going to do some reshoots.
While reshoots are a common occurrence for big blockbusters - just about every major movie undergoes some for of them - the rumour was that Suicide Squad was going back to inject more humour into proceedings.
The reason for this is potentially two-fold: (A) the harshly negative reaction to Batman V Superman's overtly somber tone, and (B) the hugely successful Deadpool showed that a comic book movie can very much have a sense of humour and still make a ton of money.
Today, Warner Bros. show's off the latest trailer for the movie, which does introduce some added jokes from the previous trailers, as well as a few new character additions...
Yes, that does appear to be Ben Affleck as Batman fighting off the crime-fighting crime-causers, and the start of the trailer name-checks Superman as being the very reason why the Suicide Squad has been put together in the first place.
Entertainment Tonight asked actor Jai Courtney (who plays Captain Boomerang in the movie) if the rumours were true, and he merely stated the reshoots were for additional action scenes, not to make the movie funnier.
Even if extensive reshoots did happen, they are by no means a death knell for a movie - just look at the "nightmare shoots" like Titanic (40 days over schedule, $100 million over budget) or The Revenant (several months over schedule, $75 million over budget) to see examples of positive outcomes.
And even if Warner Brothers did shoot the additional scenes to pump up the comedy angle, so what? The drastically dropping returns on Batman V Superman shows that return viewings aren't all that regular for the cinema-goers, while Deadpool is still managing to chug along strongly, so if comedy is the reason for that, why not jump on that bandwagon for now?
While we may never know if the additional scenes brought additional comedy or not, we will know if the project will pay off when it arrives in cinemas on August 5th.
