David Ayer

David Ayer is a well-respected director, writer, and producer, specializing in police, crime, and military-set dramas and thrillers. Ayer is one of the rare Hollywood filmmakers who amassed his pre-filmmaking experiences outside of school and instead in the hard-knock settings of South Central Los Angeles and submarine stints in the U.S. Navy.

This background led to his first produced screenplays for the submarine thriller, U-571 (2000), (with director Jonathan Mostow and Sam Montgomery as credited co-writers); Training Day (2001), which earned star Denzel Washington the best actor Oscar, and which Ayer took a co-producer credit.

He also worked on the mega-hit franchise starter, The Fast and the Furious (2001), starring Paul Walker, Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, and Jordana Brewster; the Kurt Russell-starring LAPD drama, Dark Blue (2002), which Ayer adapted from a screen story by famed crime novelist James Ellroy; and another LAPD drama, the Clark Johnson-directed big-screen version of S.W.A.T. (2003), with David McKenna as credited co-writer, and starring Samuel L. Jackson, Colin Farrell, Rodriguez, LL Cool J, and Jeremy Renner.

Marking his debut as director/writer/producer, David Ayer made his most overtly autobiographical movie with his South Central Los Angeles-set drama, Harsh Times (2005), starring Christian Bale, Freddy Rodriguez, Eva Longoria, Terry Crewes, and J.K. Simmons, and which made a small profit for MGM with a $6 million return after a Toronto film festival premiere.

Unlike in the case of Dark Blue, Ayer took on an Ellroy screenplay (with credited co-writers Kurt Wimmer and Jamie Moss) as director only of another LAPD drama, Street Kings (2008), starring Keanu Reeves, Forest Whitaker, Hugh Laurie, Chris Evans, and Common, earning a strong $66.5 million gross in a Fox Searchlight release.

Ayer’s second movie as director/writer/producer was one of his most profitable ($58 million gross on $15-million costs) and his latest in a remarkable string of LAPD dramas, End of Watch (2012), starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña, with Anna Kendrick, America Ferrera, Frank Grillo, and David Harbour.

David Ayer pulled off an unusual double-bill of movies in one year as director/writer/producer with Sabotage (2014), delivering poor box office despite Arnold Schwarzenegger leading a cast of fine actors (Sam Worthington, Olivia Williams, Terrence Howard, Joe Manganiello, Harold Perrineau, Martin Donovan, Josh Holloway, and Mireille Enos); and followed by Ayer’s first-period movie, the WWII-set Fury (2014), inspired by the experiences of Ayer’s wartime relatives and starring Brad Pitt, Shia LaBeouf, Logan Lerman, Michael Peña, Jon Bernthal, Jason Isaacs, and Scott Eastwood and profiting for Sony Pictures/Columbia Pictures with a $212 million global gross.

As writer-director, Ayer made his first comic superhero movie with the third edition of the DC Extended Universe, Suicide Squad (2016), featuring Will Smith, Jared Leto, Margot Robbie, Joel Kinnaman, Viola Davis, and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, and earning a potent $747 million worldwide for Warner Bros./DC Films.

After reuniting with Smith for the LAPD/sci-fi mashup for Netflix, Bright (2017), David Ayer was director/writer/producer of the widely-panned Los Angeles crime thriller, The Tax Collector (2020), with Bobby Soto, LaBeouf, and George Lopez, which delivered only $1.3 million in grosses on a $30 million budget.

Ayer was director-producer of one of his few movies not set in Los Angeles, the revenge thriller The Beekeeper (2024), starring Jason Statham, John Hutcherson, Emmy Raver-Lampman, Minnie Driver, Phylicia Rashad, and Jeremy Irons, and released by Amazon MGM Studios.