Amanda Waller Series in Development at HBO Max

Television

The TV branch of the DCEU is sticking with the Suicide Squad. Pivoting off the success of Peacemaker, Warner Bros. Television and HBO Max are developing a new series, this one centering on Amanda Waller. Waller is the head of ARGUS and the mastermind behind the Suicide Squad – the woman with her finger on the brain bomb buttons, in other words. Variety reports that Viola Davis will return as Waller – whom she played in both Suicide Squad and The Suicide Squad – and executive produce the series with James Gunn, Peter Safran, and Christal Henry. There’s no word on any other casting or what the story will be. Early this year, Gunn told Deadline that he was looking to make another Suicide Squad spinoff series and that it wouldn’t involve as much comedy as Peacemaker does.

Maybe I don’t have the most valuable perspective on this – I didn’t like Suicide Squad or The Suicide Squad, and I haven’t watched Peacemaker because I couldn’t stand the character in a supporting role, let alone as the lead – but this doesn’t sound like a great idea to me. Viola Davis is one of the best casting choices DC has made in recent years, and she’s great as Amanda Waller even in lousy movies (although The Suicide Squad tested her abilities with the silly nonsense and awful lines she had to suffer through), but Waller doesn’t strike me as a lead character. She’s sinister and scary, more of a looming threat than a sympathetic protagonist. If you humanize her too much, she loses her menace and ceases to be the face of a cold, utilitarian government that uses people like tools to be discarded when they’ve served their purpose. Ignoring that, they could make a series out of Waller, I suppose; sort of an even darker version of The Sandbaggers (which you should check out if you never have; it may be the greatest spy TV show of all time), which got pretty dark itself at times. But will the audience for this kind of thing really want to sit in an office with a government official while super-people are blowing things up somewhere else?

Does an Amanda Waller series sound good to you? Did you see and/or enjoy Peacemaker? Isn’t King Shark due for his own TV show? Let us know in the comments, and stay tuned to Geeks + Gamers for more DC news!