When was the last time you saw a bombastic pop-punk R-rated girl-gang antihero cape movie?
Margot Robbie and company are on their way to deliver just that.
Here's what we know so far about Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of
One Harley Quinn).
Release date
Birds of Prey is set for release on February 7th, 2020, cutting in ahead of the MCU's Phase
4 launch later in the year.
It's a great soft release timeframe, traditionally speaking, for movies that have potential to
be sleeper hits.
See the first Kingsman film for how well that strategy can work.
Marvel Studios has released its own films this time of year before, so it appears to
be mostly luck that a much smaller-budget film like Birds of Prey isn't running up against
an MCU blockbuster.
That's a good thing.
The film clearly deserves attention, given how many first-of-its-kind decisions have
gone into its production, and we're encouraged to know its release date is mostly clear to
really get that spotlight when it matters most.
Cast
Birds of Prey is headlined by a trio of women who live on the edge between villain and antihero.
Unsurprisingly, Margot Robbie will be reprising her role as Harley Quinn from 2016's Suicide
Squad.
Jurnee Smollett-Bell joins her as Black Canary, the high-kicking, sonic-screaming vigilante.
Mary Elizabeth Winstead will play Huntress, the daughter of murdered mafia royalty and
a peerless archer.
The supporting cast is equally intriguing.
Rosie Perez will play Detective Renee Montoya, a hard-scrabble Gotham PD veteran who became
a fan favorite as an icon of gay representation in comics, and like Harley Quinn, first appeared
in Batman: The Animated Series.
Ali Wong has been cast in an unnamed supporting role as "an associate" of Detective Montoya.
Meanwhile, Ella Jay Basco will play Cassandra Cain.
Comic-savvy people coming to the movie will know Cassandra Cain eventually becomes one
of the several Batgirls under Batman's tutelage.
It's difficult to tell at this juncture if the movie will set her on the path to a bat-career,
but Birds of Prey screenwriter Christine Hodson is also in charge of the Batgirl script.
Notably, it does not appear that Jared Leto will be reprising his Joker in any way whatsoever.
As the clown prince himself would say...
"Got it, got it, got it.
I am not someone who is... loved."
Birds of Prey's big bad
Ewan McGregor will be the major antagonist of the film as Black Mask, a.k.a. Roman Sionis,
a longtime Batman villain.
Like so many Batman villains, he's a kind of dark mirror to Bruce Wayne, raised in extreme
wealth by industrialist parents who never loved him and who also died mysteriously.
He took over the family business only to destroy it, which led Wayne Enterprises to purchase
the business out from under him.
Consumed with rage and a thirst for revenge, he turned to growing a crime syndicate called
the False Facers and rose to become one of the most prominent mob bosses in Gotham City.
Rumor has surfaced that Birds of Prey will make a major diversion in Black Mask's character
to portray him as a man who openly flirts with secondary villain Victor Zsasz.
Likely henchmen
Chris Messina, best known for his role as Danny Castellano in The Mindy Project, has
traded in his boy-next-door rom-com charm for a role so different that describing it
as "polar opposite" still somewhat misses the mark: Victor Zsasz.
As a frequent inmate at Gotham's iconic Arkham Asylum, Zsasz is the ultimate over-the-top
presentation of a nihilistic serial killer: he marks scars in his skin as tallies for
each of his kills, and considers his murders to be a gift, liberating his victims from
the emptiness of existence.
Based on the trailer footage released so far, it seems like he will be working as Black
Mask's main lackey, chasing down the Birds of Prey.
That is pretty consistent with the character's role in the comics, as Zsasz's relatively
straightforward violence often makes him an excellent distraction to be deployed by more
cerebral Batman villains.
Additionally, Robert Catrini has been cast as a character named Stefano Galante.
Some have suggested that Catrini's character may be a combination of two characters from
other mafia families prominent in Batman canon: Stefano Mandragora and Junior Galante.
The Mandragora family are chiefly responsible for the murder of Huntress' mother, suggesting
that a whole lot of potential character motivation is set to unfold in Birds of Prey.
The director
Cathy Yan has been brought on as director for Birds of Prey, which makes her the first
Asian woman to direct a superhero film.
She began her professional life as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal and The LA Times
before turning her eye to film.
The result was a bridge between her two careers with Dead Pigs, a fictionalized take on a
Guardian news story about tens of thousands of dead pigs found in the Huangpu River.
The film was featured and lauded at the Sundance Film Festival in 2018.
John Wick director Chad Stahelski is serving as a second-unit director, with the specific
task of expanding action sequences.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Stahelski will apparently be uncredited.
Though fans often see reshoots as a red flag, there's nothing too unusual at play here.
Second unit photography is a standard process, and Stahelski's 87 Eleven studio has been
assisting with Birds of Prey's stunt coordination from the beginning.
Heavily-stylized, in-your-face fighting sequences are Stahelski's bread and butter, so his stylistic
touch being added to what already looks to be a bold, visually-striking film is promising.
The scriptwriter
Christina Hodson, coming off the surprise success of the Transformers franchise's latest
offering Bumblebee, has written the screenplay for Birds of Prey. Hodson must have developed
quite a kinship both with Margot Robbie and her passion project, as the two of them have
been chipping away at the screenplay for three years.
Meeting Robbie and working on the project took Hodson on what she called "a deep, deep
dive" of DC canon after growing up as a Batman fan.
To say she's having a great couple of years would be an understatement: she's also been
tapped to pen the upcoming Batgirl script in the wake of Joss Whedon's exit from the
project.
Hodson has been racking up accolades and rapidly becoming the must-have screenwriter of the
industry, with three unproduced scripts on the Black List between 2012 and 2014.
The plot
A rumored synopsis in 2018 suggested that Birds of Prey would find Harley Quinn breaking
up with the Joker and then teaming up with Black Canary, Huntress, and Renee Montoya
to rescue a young Cassandra Cain from the clutches of an evil crime lord.
At the time of the original reporting, Ewan McGregor had not yet been cast, and Black
Mask hadn't even been publicly considered as a character; apparently the originally-intended
Big Bad many drafts ago was the Penguin.
Birds of Prey comics are usually serialized as vigilante missions, so any story to draw
from them comes largely through character backgrounds and incidental moments, as opposed
to overarching plot.
There's one bit of rumored, truly bizarre content floating around the internet, though
without any context, it's both difficult to believe or understand.
According to a couple of alleged plot leaks, the MacGuffin of the film is rumored to be
a collection of nude pictures of Black Mask that Cassandra Cain gets a hold of and then
eats to hide the evidence.
No, that's not all the pictures are somehow stored in a diamond.
This is a rumor, of course, and hopefully will work better than it sounds.
.
The teaser
There's plenty we still don't know about Birds of Prey, but we certainly know what it looks
like: punkish, irreverent, and glitzy.
The first teaser features the German house group Moderat's song "A New Error" over rapid
cuts between the main characters hanging out in costume.
Harley, of course, is most eclectically-dressed in something like a yellow romper or overalls
and wearing a coat made of holographic streamer material.
Her friends Black Canary and Huntress appear in slick leather, looking annoyed with everything
going on around them.
Victor Zsasz, without his usual visible scar tallies and Black Mask smugly mug at the camera.
It's more costume test than trailer, but it does just enough to hint at the movie's vibe.
The trailer
The official Birds of Prey Instagram announced a surprise trailer in early October 2019,
in addition to four shiny new posters featuring Harley.
When the trailer went live online the next day, we were treated to a series of trailer-typical
fast cuts of action, mixed with some establishing shots of all the principal characters, all
dubbed over by a monologue from Harley herself.
The trailer is a relative feast compared to the sneak peeks we'd had previously: the movie's
theme of emancipation isn't just for Harley, but for all the women on her side, united
against Black Mask.
Harley alludes to the idea that both she and Black Canary are harlequins, faceless servants
subject to masters.
Harley may be the star, but it doesn't seem like she's the only one trying to carve out
a new place for herself.
Cassandra Cain is apparently on the run from Black Mask and Victor Zsasz.
It's unclear right now if Huntress is more connected to Stefano Galante than Black Mask,
but that's somewhat irrelevant as the mobster is clearly working with him.
Renee Montoya is introduced carrying a box, suggesting that she is either quitting or
has been fired from the police force.
In short, it's the kind of wholesome story of sisterhood we can all get behind: a group
of messy women drawn together by fate to escape a monster trying to catch them.
The actors are all in
At New York Comic Con 2019, Margot Robbie gave an interview to DC Daily along with Jurnee
Smollett-Bell, Rosie Perez, and Ella Jay Basco.
In it, characterization became center focus with questions posed to each woman about their
place in the film.
With emancipation being an overall theme, Perez talked about Detective Montoya's need
to free herself from the patriarchal oppression she experiences in the police department.
Of course, Montoya's character is more complex than just feeling stifled as a police officer.
"She has her flaws, too.
Sometimes she will do anything to make sure she meets her agenda."
It sounds like a kind of chaotic-good alignment justice at any cost.
Smollett-Bell described Black Canary as a person needing emancipation of the self, a
woman who feels uncomfortable in her own skin and specifically with her powers.
Her journey is about mastering her ability and her identity in order to find purpose.
Basco says Cassandra Cain is a street-smart take-no-guff girl who is eminently capable
of manipulation of everyone around her, friend or foe.
This is a particular turn given the fact that the plot summarizes her as needing rescue
she may be in danger, but she's clearly still determined to look out for number one.
And Harley?
According to Robbie, the story is told from Harley's point of view and that means color,
drama, and a wildly unreliable narrator.
But at its heart, this movie is guided by the premise that women can save each other.
Catch Birds of Prey when it arrives in theaters on February 7th, 2020.
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