David Ayer (born January 18, 1968 in Champaign, Illinois) is an American film director, producer and screenwriter.
He grew up in Bloomington, Minnesota, and Bethesda, Maryland, where he was kicked out of his house by his parents as a teenager. He then lived with his cousin in Los Angeles, where his life experience with criminality in South Central became the inspiration for many of his later films.
Sometime later, Ayer enlisted in the US Navy as a submarine sonar technician, which served him to write his first script, U-571. He made his directorial debut with Harsh Times in 2005.
Works with pages on TV Tropes:
- U-571 (2000) (screenwriter only)
- Training Day (2001) (screenwriter only)
- The Fast and the Furious (2001) (screenwriter only)
- S.W.A.T. (2003) (screenwriter only)
- Harsh Times (2005)
- Street Kings (2008)
- End of Watch (2012)
- Sabotage (2014)
- Fury (2014)
- Suicide Squad (2016)
- Bright (2017)
- Deputy (2020) — directed the first two episodes
- The Tax Collector (2020)
- The Beekeeper (2024)
- A Working Man (2025)
Tropes in his work:
- Author Appeal:
- Los Angeles gangbanger subculture, as several of his films are about or feature such criminals. This is due to him having had to live in such an environment growing up.
- He also has a strong interest in World War II. He wrote U-571, directed Fury and has been planning to direct a remake of The Dirty Dozen (though the latter seems to be in Development Hell).
- Executive Meddling: He took much flak for how Suicide Squad turned out, but in reality he had no say on the modifications (editing, reshoots) done to it past a certain point. Many of the most criticized aspects of it originated in orders from Warner Bros. executives as he gradually revealed over the years. He has shared a number of pictures from his cut doing so.
- Tattooed Crook: A lot of the aforementioned gangbangers from his films are covered in tattoos. The title of Harsh Times even uses a gothic typeface associated with gang tattoos.