"It was a fun time, but it was a frustrating endgame."
Out of all of the blockbusters of recent years, there have been few discussed more than 2016's Suicide Squad.
Behind-the-scenes disagreements between producers at Warner Bros. and the movie's writer/director David Ayer led to many different edits of the movie being worked on.
The version that was eventually released in cinemas in 2017 was a massive box office success ($749 million on a $150 million budget), but also landed with one of the worst critical responses from any major comic book movie (26% on Rotten Tomatoes).
In the half-decade since then, there has been a strong swell of support to #ReleaseTheAyerCut, following in the footsteps of the vastly improved Snyder Cut of the Justice League movie that was eventually shown to the public.
We recently caught up with Oscar-winning composer Steven Price, who actually provided the score for Suicide Squad, and during the conversation we had to bring up this topic.
Price will soon be coming to Ireland to conduct a live orchestral version of Our Planet, his collaboration with David Attenborough, and his CV to date has been incredible.
Aside from winning the Academy Award for Best Score for Gravity, Price also worked with Basement Jaxx on Attack The Block, and has worked on movies such as Scott Pilgrim VS The World, Beast, My Policeman, Fury, Last Night In Soho and loads more.
We discuss all of this in our interview with Price right here:
As mentioned, we did have to chat to Price about the Suicide Squad fallout, and we wanted to know what his memories were of working on the troubled production.
Price told us:
"I think the thing I always point to with this is if you listen to the soundtrack record for that, there is an awful lot of music that you won't hear during the film. I was on the project for a long time, and I wrote a lot of music to various cuts.
"And in the end, that film went the way it went, and obviously there was a change in direction that happened towards the end of it where a lot of songs came in and various editorial things happened.
"For me, it was my second project with David Ayer, and I have a tremendous amount of time for him. I was so proud of the work we did together for Fury, that is still one of the scores that I'm really proud of, and it was a very close collaboration with him.
"I'm very supportive of all things David. It was a frustrating and tricky time. A hell of experience in terms of the 'Hollywood' thing, but I'm very proud of the work.
"It was the first time that I'd recorded in LA, and it was just glorious. You were with these amazing musicians who do this all of the time, and it was a fun time, but it was a frustrating endgame."
Following that, we asked Price directly is there another edit of Suicide Squad that he wished audiences had seen instead?
Price told us:
"I'd always rather audiences see the version that had all of the music in it! I mean, things exist, but who knows in the politics of that world what could ever happen.
"Certainly, you can see even from the titles on the score album, there were a lot of things that you didn't see."
Steven Price's performance of Our Planet will take place on Saturday, 22 October, and you can get tickets for that show right here.
