What King Shark Almost Looked Like in Ayer's SUICIDE SQUAD (2016) Concept Art by Peter Rubin

Check out Suicide Squad concept art by Peter Rubin!

One of the most complex characters in James Gunn's The Suicide Squad was King Shark, also known as Nanaue. The humanoid shark was created by writer Karl Kesel and artist Tom Grummett for Superboy back in 1994 but has also fought superheroes like Aquaman, Batman, and Flash. 

When director David Ayer was developing his live-action adaptation of the supervillain-turned-superhero team the Squad consists of Deadshot, Harley Quinn, Captain Boomerang, Rick Flag, El Diablo, Slipnot, Katana, and Killer Croc. 

The director considered adding King Shark to the team. But technical considerations meant he had to drop the idea. "One of the characters for the squad lineup that I was actually thinking about was King Shark, but we realized it would take a lot of work, a lot of CG work," he said on Twitter. "I wasn’t quite comfortable having a full CG character. We actually ended up going with Killer Croc, who turned out to be the right guy for the job."

The technical considerations were difficult for the director of the sequel James Gunn too. He said getting King Shark to look right was a struggle. "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 told Games Radar. "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."

We don't know how far Ayer took the design of King Shark but we know at least one concept artist took a crack at it. Peter Rubin recently shared concept art from the film and they include King Shark. They also include an alternate take on the Joker and the scenes where he tortures and drops Harley Quinn into a vat of chemicals.

Rubin is a professional concept artist who's worked on big-budget projects like Black Panther (2018), Justice League (2017), and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014).

Click on the images to enlarge and reveal censored content.

See more of Peter Rubin's portfolio at https://www.petermitchellrubin.com Click on the links if you want to see more of Peter Rubin's work or Suicide Squad artwork on my blog.

About Suicide Squad (2016)

Official synopsis: "It feels good to be bad… Assemble a team of the world’s most dangerous, incarcerated Super-Villains, provide them with the most powerful arsenal at the government’s disposal, and send them off on a mission to defeat an enigmatic, insuperable entity. U.S. intelligence officer Amanda Waller has determined only a secretly convened group of disparate, despicable individuals with next to nothing to lose will do. However, once they realize they weren’t picked to succeed but chosen for their patent culpability when they inevitably fail, will the Suicide Squad resolve to die trying, or decide it’s every man for himself?"
Directed by David Ayers
Cinematography by Roman Vasyanov
Production Design by Sean Haworth, Oliver Scholl
"Suicide Squad" stars Will Smith, Ike Barinholtz, Margot Robbie, Viola Davis, Jared Leto, Jai Courtney, Ezra Miller, Jay Hernandez, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Joel Kinnaman, Karen Fukuhara
"Suicide Squad" was released on August 05, 2016 (United States)
What do you think of the concept art? If you've seen Suicide Squad what do you think of the look?

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© Copyright 2016 Warner Bros., and Peter Rubin. All rights reserved.
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