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Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn Movie Lands A Director

The future of Warner Bros. Pictures’ superhero universe has become a bit uncertain now that Wonder Woman is the only one of five films to meet expectations critically and commercially, but that hasn’t stopped some projects from moving forward. Among those films is a live-action feature that will bring back Suicide Squad actress Margot Robbie as the deranged Harley Quinn, and feature a group of female heroes from the DC Comics universe. That film now has a director, with little-known filmmaker Cathy Yan reportedly winning over the studio and producers with her plans for Quinn and the ensemble adventure. According to Deadline, the still-untitled film will be based on DC’s Birds of Prey series, which has featured a rotating cast of characters — always female — over the years in various incarnations of the team. The vigilantes Black Canary, Huntress, and the former Batgirl, Barbara Gordon, have all been members of the crime-fighting team, on a roster that has also included Quinn, Poison Ivy, and other former criminals at times. Prior to joining the Warner Bros. superhero film, Yan directed last year’s Dead Pigs, a small-budget drama that won the World Cinema Dramatic Award For Ensemble Acting at the Sundance Film Festival. Previously, she wrote and directed several short films, and was a Wall Street Journal reporter who became one of the newspaper’s youngest reporters to have multiple stories featured on the front page. Yan is now the second female filmmaker in Warner Bros. Pictures’ superhero universe after Patty Jenkins helmed Wonder Woman, and she is the first Asian female director to helm a mainstream superhero movie. Robbie, who is also one of the producers on the film, reportedly made a strong push to bring in a female director on the project. Yan will be directing the film from a script penned by Christina Hodson, who wrote the upcoming Transformers spinoff film based on the Bumblebee character, and was also hired to pen the script for an upcoming Batgirl movie. Robbie’s portrayal of Quinn is expected to make a return in the upcoming Suicide Squad sequel, and two more films featuring the character — a Gotham City Sirens film and a project with Harley Quinn and Jared Leto’s Joker — have been announced, but appear to have been put on the back-burner by the studio. The Quinn movie, however, is expected to begin filming by the end of 2018 or in early 2019, depending on Robbie’s schedule. Robbie is expected to begin production soon on Quentin Tarantino’s film involving the Manson Family murders, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. There is no release date set for the untitled Quinn and Birds of Prey movie at this point.