Margot Robbie Teases Harley Quinn Spinoff as a Possible R-Rated Girl Gang Movie
If you were going to rank the most beloved characters in the entire DC Comics canon, Harley Quinn would likely be near the top thanks to Margot Robbie’s performance in 2016’s Suicide Squad. Ever since Robbie smashed and grabbed her way into the hearts of millions with her indelible performance as daddy’s lil’ monster, Warner Bros. has wisely been working towards giving Harley Quinn a larger canvas.
There have been a bunch of potential spinoff projects bandied about, from Suicide Squad‘s director David Ayer helming a Gotham City Sirens film to uniting Harley with her sometime lover, all-time villain the Joker in a kind of dark romance/crime thriller. Yet now it looks like the project with the best shot at appearing in a theater near you soon is Robbie’s very own Birds of Prey film, which she’ll be producing. What’s more, Robbie and Warner Bros have recruited director Cathy Yan to lead the project.
Speaking with Collider about her upcoming noir thriller Terminal, Robbie dished about how she’s been thinking about, and pitching, her Birds of Prey project since she began working on Suicide Squad back in 2015. She’s always envisioned Harley on screen with a bunch of other powerful women, with a woman behind the camera, too. What’s more, she always thought it would be R-rated.
“I pitched the idea of an R-rated girl gang film including Harley, because I was like, ‘Harley needs friends.’ Harley loves interacting with people, so don’t ever make her do a standalone film. She’s got to be with other people, it should be a girl gang. I wasn’t seeing enough girl gangs on screen, especially in the action space. So that was always a big part of it. And then of course having a female director to tell that story. And giving a female director the chance to do big budget stuff. They always get ‘Here’s the tiny little film’… I was like, ‘I love action. I love action films. I’m a girl. What, are we meant to only like a specific thing’? So it was a hugely important to find a female director for this, if possible. But at the end of the day — male, female — the best director gets the job and Cathy was the best director.”
Robbie’s Birds of Prey film is being scripted by Bumblee scribe Christina Hodson. We can hardly think of a better character than Harley Quinn to follow in Deadpool and Logan‘s footsteps into an R-rated superhero film. Suicide Squad was hardly a perfect movie, but every time Harley was on screen, the film popped, and it was obvious she deserved a bigger spotlight. Robbie proved herself a dynamic, versatile performer years ago, and has recently added super producer to her official list of talents after she helped get the sensational I, Tonya made. Yet I, Tonya was a script brought to Robbie, which of course she loved and helped get produced. Birds of Prey, however, has been near and dear to her heart for a long time, and with her both starring and producing, and the talented Han and Hodson directing and scripting respectively, we think Harley Quinn has a shot at becoming one of the most beloved DC characters of them all, full stop.
Featured image: Margot Robbie attends the 90th Annual Academy Awards at Hollywood & Highland Center on March 4, 2018 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Christopher Polk/Getty Images)
