The Suicide Squad Casts Nathan Fillion, Reuniting Him With Director James Gunn: Report

Nathan Fillion is joining The Suicide Squad, per reports. The 48-year-old Fillion — best known for playing the lead in the ABC crime comedy-drama series Castle, and to genre fans for his leading role in the short-lived series Firefly — will reunite with writer-director James Gunn on the DC Comics film. Fillion has previously worked with Gunn on the 2006 horror comedy Slither, the 2010 superhero dark comedy Super, and the 2014 Marvel Cinematic Universe chapter Guardians of the Galaxy. There's no word on Fillion's character in The Suicide Squad, which is set to be more of a soft reboot than a sequel.

Deadline was the first to bring word of Fillion's casting in The Suicide Squad over the weekend, a day after it reported that comedian Steve Agee (The Sarah Silverman Program) would voice King Shark in the Warner Bros.-produced DC universe film. Fillion and Agee's hiring comes in the same month as German actor-musician Flula Borg, whose Suicide Squad role is also being kept under wraps, same as Fillion's. The three are part of new cast additions that include Idris Elba as a new unknown character, Storm Reid as his daughter, David Dastmalchian as Polka-Dot Man, and Daniela Melchior as Ratcatcher.

They join returning Suicide Squad stars Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, Joel Jinnaman as Rick Flag, Viola Davis as Amanda Walker, and Jai Courtney reprising as George "Digger" Harkness / Captain Boomerang. Other stars from the original — Will Smith and Jared Leto among others — are not expected to return. The Suicide Squad is going to be a weird mix of the old and the new, as it plans to essentially re-launch the beleaguered series that's part of a largely-failed superhero universe. The original Suicide Squad was a dumpster fire, with a 27 percent rotten score on reviews aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.

The Suicide Squad is slated to release August 6, 2021 in India and across the world. Production is scheduled to begin on September 23, per Deadline. For Warner Bros., The Suicide Squad is one of several scheduled films in the DC universe, alongside Robbie-starrer Birds of Prey in February 2020, Wonder Woman 1984 in June 2020, Robert Pattinson-starrer The Batman in June 2021, and Aquaman 2 in December 2022. Before all that, there's the standalone Joker origin movie out in October.