SUICIDE SQUAD Casts Viola Davis as Amanda Waller

At last, "The Wall" has arrived.

Latino-Review is reporting that the upcoming David Ayer film Suicide Squad has cast Viola Davis in the key role of DC Comics character Amanda Waller. 

According to the article, the role is hers as long as the filmmakers can work around her television schedule for the ABC series How to Get Away with Murder.  If so, Davis will join Tom Hardy as Rick Flagg, Jared Leto as The Joker, Will Smith as Deadshot, Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, Jai Courtney as (Captain) Boomerang, and Cara Delevingne as The Enchantress.

In addition to her current TV series, Davis has appeared in numerous film and television projects, including the upcoming Blackhat, Get On Up, Ender's Game, Beautiful Creatures, The Help, Eat Pray Love, Disturbia, Solaris, Kate & Leopold, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and Threshold.

Created in 1986 by John Ostrander, Len Wein and John Byrne, Amanda Waller first appeared in Legends #1 as a former congressional aide and government agent placed in charge of Task Force X, a government-supervised group of supervillains who serve in dangerous missions in exchange for amnesty.  An often ruthless and manipulative leader as the warden of Belle Reve prison, Waller later served as the Secretary of Metahuman Affairs during Lex Luthor's Presidential administrationan and as the White Queen in the espionage organization Checkmate.

In the current New 52 continuity, Waller has been reimagined as a younger, thinner woman who was once involved with Team 7 before assuming command of the Suicide Squad.  After an operation Waller was involved in resulted in the death of all other squad members, including several she had personally recruited, she requested command of a unit she could send to their deaths without regret.  Waller later formed the Justice League of America as a team separate from the main Justice League that she could control.

This will be the second time Amanda Waller has been adapted for film, after Angela Bassett portrayed her in the 2011 film Green Lantern. The character has also appeared on the television series Smallville (played by Pam Grier) and currently appears on the CW series Arrow (played by Cynthia Addai-Robinson).  In addition, Waller has appeared in the animated projects Justice League Unlimited and Superman/Batman: Public Enemies (voiced by CCH Pounder), and Young Justice (voiced by Sheryl Lee Ralph).

Suicide Squad is scheduled to arrive in theaters on August 5, 2016.