After much speculation about her next outing as Harley Quinn, it was announced last month that Margot Robbie would be reprising her role as the fan favourite villain in the “girl gang movie” Birds of Prey, in addition to serving as executive producer.
Cathy Yan (Dead Pigs) has been tapped to direct the R-rated feature, and during an interview with MovieFone Robbie has revealed that she has been developing the project for the past three years and has been working hard to secure the right director.
“I’ve been working on this for three years now and, from the beginning, I wanted to make an R-rated girl gang film and we needed a female director,” said Robbie. “The best director always wins, whether male or female, it’s more about who understands the character the best. But given how few opportunities female directors get, particularly on these big budget films, I thought it was our duty to put more effort into exploring female directors than male ones. Definitely not to exclude male directors, but put more effort into exploring female directors. So we looked at both male and female directors and Cathy was the best.”
Warner Bros. and DC Films have already scored one major success with a female director in Patty Jenkins, who delivered a critical and commercial success with Wonder Woman, and is currently prepping the sequel ahead of a summer shoot. Meanwhile, Selma and A Wrinkle in Time helmer Ava DuVernay also recently signed on to direct an adaptation of New Gods.
Robbie also went on to discuss the numerous Harley Quinn-related projects that Warner Bros. has been developing, stating that her focus has always been on the Birds of Prey project alongside screenwriter Christina Hodson:
“I pitched it to her actually,” said Robbie. “I said, ‘I want to make a girl gang, R-rated film that Harley is a part of.’ And we started working on it from there. Meanwhile, over the course of the next few years, the studio was exploring other Harley Quinn spin-offs. But I was not a part of those versions, I was always focused on this one with Christina. I know that they were exploring Gotham City Sirens with David Ayer, and I know they were exploring a Joker and Harley Quinn movie, and they were exploring doing I don’t know what else. I wasn’t a part of those. I was focusing on this. I kept presenting it to the studio until they felt it was at a point where they were ready to do it. And now we’re all in.”
SEE ALSO: Margot Robbie teases DC’s R-rated Birds of Prey movie
Birds of Prey is reportedly targeting a late 2018 production start, having jumped ahead of Suicide Squad 2 in the studio’s list of DC priorities. Assuming there are no setbacks, we can probably expect the movie to arrive early in 2020.
