SPECIAL THANKS TO...
IN THE SHORT but illustrious history of Special Thanks To…, the story has always been told by the Special Thanker. Well, now it’s time for a Special Thankee to have their day in the sun. Scroll through the brightly coloured end credits of James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad, and you’ll find a number of notable names nestled under “The Filmmakers Would Like To Thank”. There’s Gunn’s wife, Jen Holland, plus David Ayer, Gunn’s predecessor in the Suicide Squad director’s chair, and screenwriter Jeremy Slater. And there’s also Kumail Nanjiani (pictured below), the comedian and actor, and his writer wife, Emily V. Gordon. So, what gives? “We wrote the whole screenplay and directed the movie,” deadpans Nanjiani. “No, we’re good friends with James. He had shown us an early version of the movie, and we told him our thoughts on it.”
Those thoughts didn’t extend to recommending major rewrites or reshoots, as it happens. “James never does reshoots, because he knows exactly what he wants the movie to be,” continues Nanjiani. “So even though he showed us this stuff, there was really nothing we had to contribute. There was really little stuff like, ‘Hey, it wasn’t quite clear geographically where they were,’ or, ‘When they come into the room, do you have something that shows this person?’
I would kill to get the kinds of notes that we gave to James. We were like, ‘Put it out tomorrow, this is done.’ So it was very kind of him to thank us in the credits. He didn’t have to.”