One of the fun things about DC is the multiple kinds of animal/human hybrids that exist, and one of my favorites, King Shark, will be playing a big role in the upcoming James Gunn supervillain film The Suicide Squad.
In talking with Gamesradar, Gunn spoke about the difference between writing for this team, versus his Guardians of the Galaxy films—especially a character like King Shark, who, in this incarnation, is more shark-man than man-shark.
“From a character standpoint, he’s very different from [Rocket and Groot], because at the end of the day, with the Guardians, we know they’re good,” Gunn explained. “That isn’t true of the Suicide Squad. King Shark is a fish, and he eats human beings. He doesn’t have such a mammalian love for people. But he wants to belong, and he wants to show that he’s smart. And he’s not.”
He continued, “Rocket was hard because it’s difficult taking an animal and turning it into a humanoid shape, but it’s five times more difficult to do that with a shark – it was a very, very painstaking process.”
King Shark has become a popular character in recent years, making appearances in The Flash, HBO Max’s Harley Quinn (and is the best character in it, sorry not sorry), and the Escape From Arkham animated Suicide Squad film. All of those appearances are fun for me because I genuinely love how weird King Shark is and how many different forms the incarnations of the character can take.
In this one, Sylvester Stallone will be voicing the character, which is just honestly perfect casting. Rather than the practical effects used to make Killer Croc in the previous film, according to io9, the character is fully CGI. The team used photorealism to make the character look as authentic and believable onscreen as, well, a King Shark-type can look.
Considering how little Killer Croc got to do (and I’m still dealing with the secondhand cringe of him asking for B.E.T. in his jail cell), I am hoping that using CGI will enable King Shark to be a bigger part of the fight scenes.
Right now, we know Gunn’s film will involve Task Force X infiltrating the South American island of Corto Maltese to destroy Jotunheim (oh hey, that’s where Loki is from), a Nazi-era prison where political prisoners and others have been kept. Corto Maltese is a staple of the DC universe and has been featured in The Dark Knight Returns, Batman ’89, Smallville, and Arrow, to name a few.
(via io9, image: Warner Bros.)
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