James Gunn Reveals a Polka-Dot Man Prequel Series Has Been Discussed, Centered on His Mother and Her Superhero Children

Of all the oddball villains James Gunn put in ‘The Suicide Squad’, none surprised audiences quite like Polka-Dot Man. Introduced as a punchline, Abner Krill turned out to be one of the film’s most tragic and most beloved characters, thanks to a heartbreaking backstory and a performance by David Dastmalchian. Now Gunn has revealed that a Polka-Dot Man prequel series has actually been discussed, and the idea is as strange as you’d expect.

The comments came from ‘The Suicide Squad: Is It Canon? — The Official Podcast’, an hour-long special that Spotify accidentally shared early as a trailer before its scheduled release. On the show, Gunn confirmed the film is DCU canon, calling it the first canon film in the DCU. He then turned to Krill’s future.

Gunn said he has talked about developing a Krill TV show about his mother and their many superpowered children. He stressed that it has been discussed but is not in active development. The appeal, he explained, is seeing what happened to the rest of the family, where they went and what they were like back then.

That makes the pitch a prequel rather than a sequel, which solves an obvious problem. Gunn has said he wouldn’t bring back a character he killed in an earlier film because it becomes too confusing, and Polka-Dot Man dies in ‘The Suicide Squad’. A story set before the film sidesteps that rule.

The family is the heart of Krill’s story. In ‘The Suicide Squad’, his mother was a scientist at S.T.A.R. Labs who experimented on her children with an interdimensional virus in an attempt to turn them into superheroes. Krill survived, with polka dots that grow on his body and can be thrown from his gauntlets, but many of his siblings did not.

The trauma left him seeing his mother in everyone he meets, and it drives the film’s most memorable scene. A series about the family could dig into the experiments, the siblings and the woman who obsessively wanted superheroes, giving the story a darker, more intimate tone.

Dastmalchian has repeatedly said he’d love to return. In earlier interviews, he said he hadn’t spoken with Gunn about coming back, but pitched the idea of a story about how Polka-Dot Man was born. He has also said he was interested in a prequel exploring the siblings and their domineering mother at S.T.A.R. Labs, and he even wrote stories about the character’s past before filming.

The role carries personal weight for him. Dastmalchian has spoken about a physical condition that gave him a deep connection to Krill, which Gunn was not aware of when he cast him. That history helps explain why fans have rallied around the idea.

The character was never an obvious choice. Polka-Dot Man first appeared as a low-tier villain in early 1960s Batman comics, wearing a costume of polka dots that turned into gadgets. Gunn has said he included him because he wanted a deep mix of characters, some well known and some not, and he reinvented him with a far darker origin.

That reinvention is why the character resonated so strongly. A joke villain became someone audiences cared about, which is the kind of transformation Gunn has become known for.

The idea also reflects how Gunn is thinking about his universe. ‘Peacemaker’ and ‘Creature Commandos’ have already built on the world of ‘The Suicide Squad’, and the DCU keeps folding in characters and events from that film. A Krill-centered series would be a quirky addition to that slate.

It would also be a very different kind of project from the big franchise installments. A small, character-driven show about a family of failed superheroes has more in common with the offbeat tone that made the film a cult favorite.

For now, nothing is greenlit. Gunn’s slate is already full with ‘Supergirl’, ‘Lanterns’, ‘Clayface’ and a Batman project, so a Polka-Dot Man series is likely a long shot. Still, the fact that it was discussed shows how much affection the studio has for the character.

Fans, meanwhile, now have a new wish to add to the list. If the DCU can make room for a talking weasel and a sentient fish, it can surely make room for a family of polka-dotted failures.

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