After a lowkey (financially, speaking) release of “Shazam!” and the monster acclaim and box office of “Joker,” 2019 has been a bit of a mixed bag for Warner Bros. and its superhero projects. So, how is WB moving forward? Will the studio continue in the same vein as “Aquaman,” “Wonder Woman,” and “Shazam!,” creating family-friendly fare or will WB embrace the darkness of “Joker?” Well, the answer, at least in the case of the upcoming “Birds of Prey,” the answer seems to be a bit of both.
Speaking to /Film, Margot Robbie, who plays Harley Quinn in ‘Birds,’ opened up about the new film and how it will probably go into darker territory and not be shackled by the constraints of the more family-friendly ratings, such as the PG-13 given to Robbie’s DC debut, “Suicide Squad.”
“I did feel like I had to censor myself a lot [during ‘Suicide Squad’], obviously to suit a PG rating,” Robbie said. “And a lot of the characters that exist in the DC world, to be honest, are quite dark. And a lot of them, Huntress for example, have serious childhood trauma, have serious mental illnesses like Harley. But I felt like sometimes you can’t really go as deep with those things if you have to censor yourself. And I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be liberating if we didn’t have to worry about that?’ and really go for it, and then later in the edit kind of find where the tone of movie lies.”
While it’s assumed that tone lies firmly in R-rated territory, it does sound as if there’s a potential for a PG-13. Though, at this point, with “Joker” earning more than $1 billion at the box office, Warner Bros. probably isn’t too worried about “Birds of Prey” carrying a similar rating.
And it’s not just in the rating that “Birds of Prey” is going to differ from David Ayer’s “Suicide Squad.” According to another report from Collider, director Cathy Yan explains that her new film is connected to the 2016 ‘Squad,’ but ‘Birds’ is pretty different and exists almost in its own universe.
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“There is not any known amount of time. No… it kind of exists in a parallel timeline,” said Yan about how far after “Suicide Squad” the upcoming “Birds of Prey” story follows.
She added, “With ‘Suicide Squad’ she’s so connected to the Joker. I mean, their story is so intertwined. It really is their love story if you will. But this is not. And so I think that gave us a lot of opportunity to say like what is she like, not necessarily post-Joker but just in almost like a parallel universe, and allowed all of us the freedom to say like we’re gonna create a different Gotham.”
So, it appears that the bones of “Birds of Prey” is firmly in the continuity begun in “Suicide Squad,” but that Yan, Robbie, and the others have been given the freedom to go their own way to a certain extent. Considering the poor critical reception that ‘Squad’ received several years ago, it’s probably not a bad idea to try something new.
“Birds of Prey” is set to hit theaters on February 7, 2020.
