Look, Suicide Squad may have had its issues on set — most of them stemming from sad enchanted wax figure Jared Leto — but they would have been even more interesting if they had happened to Shia LaBeouf.
Image: Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Paramount
Variety has a new profile out on LaBoeuf and he says that David Ayer originally wanted him to play the role of a Navy SEAL under Rick Flag’s command. The part was eventually played by Scott Eastwood, and if you missed him, LaBoeuf can explain why. LaBoeuf told Variety, that “The character was different initially” and “Then Will [Smith] came in, and the script changed a bit. That character and Tom [Hardy’s] character [Rick Flag] got written down to build Will up.”
Makes sense. There are a lot of characters in that movie, and Smith’s Deadshot is a lot more important than one of the SEALS. And Smith is by far one of the best things in the movie and the most likeable he’s been in a movie in ages. It’s not a huge loss.
But then LaBoeuf gets to the kicker, where he says, “I don’t think Warner Bros. wanted me. I went in to meet [them], and they were like, ‘Nah, you’re crazy. You’re a good actor, but not this one.’ It was a big investment for them.”
Look, this is obviously from LaBoeuf’s point of view. It could be true, it could be a distortion of what really happened. But I would love it to be true. Just imagine the execs at Warner Bros. vetoing someone from Suicide Squad for being “crazy”. Even better, imagine they didn’t, and then imagine him at the receiving end of one of Leto’s gifts, like a dead pig carcass or an unwrapped condom or literally any of the things we’ve heard about in the last six months.
I wish LaBoeuf had been there. Warner Bros. might have discovered that he was much saner than they thought.