Why Margot Robbie DUMPED Harley & Ivy Team-Up Movie
The real reason we aren't seeing Gotham City Sirens being brought to big-screen life.
With Cathy Yan’s Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) hitting the silver screen next week, star Margot Robbie has revealed why she opted to tackle Birds of Prey instead of the previously announced Gotham City Sirens.
2016’s Suicide Squad was certainly a mixed bag of a movie, yet one of the few undoubted positives to come out of that picture was Robbie’s Maid of Mischief. As such, Warner Bros. swiftly announced plans for several Harley Quinn-centric projects, such as a Suicide Squad sequel, the female-driven Gotham City Sirens, and a twisted love story for Harley and Jared Leto’s Joker.
While said love story for Quinn and her puddin’ was quickly put on the backburner before being axed completely, it took a little while longer for Gotham City Sirens to be put on hold. But put on hold, it did indeed become.
Based on the comic book title of the same name, Gotham City Sirens would have featured Robbie’s Harleen alongside Catwoman and Poison Ivy. Not just that, but the movie was expected to highlight the on/off romance between Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy that has been a feature of the comics for years.
In a new interview, Margot Robbie has now revealed that Gotham City Sirens was shelved in order to spotlight certain lesser-known characters in Birds of Prey.
Speaking to Nerdist, Robbie explained, “Whilst I was researching the character I started to read Birds of Prey, and first I fell love in with Huntress and I started looking into all of that. I was like, ‘Wow, there’s so many cool female DC characters and no one knows anything about any of them! So what if we had a platform for fans to get to know and fall in love with some of these other amazing women?’ Focusing on the Gotham City Sirens, there were only three of us and we were all well known, whereas with Birds of Prey you can pick any grouping for that, and I thought that might be the perfect platform to introduce some female characters who might really have some legs in the DC Universe.”
Those female characters that Robbie is talking about for Birds of Prey, of course, are Jurnee Smollet-Bell as Black Canary, Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Huntress, Rosie Perez as Renee Montoya, and Ella Jay Basco as Cassandra Cain.
Black Canary and her Canary Cry have long been a mainstay of DC Comics, with various incarnations of this hero having been a regular member of the Justice League. As for Huntress, Helena Bertinelli is a vigilante who often works alongside the greater Bat family, with her father Franco being a no-good mob boss. Then there’s Renee Montoya, who was created, like Harley Quinn, for Batman: The Animated Series and is one of Gotham City’s most trusted detectives. Where Cassandra Cain is concerned, she’s somebody in the comics who is a stoic, clinical badass who has gone by the name of Batgirl, Kasumi, Black Bat, and most recently as Orphan.
This collection of ladies will be butting heads with Ewan McGregor’s Black Mask when Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) hits screens worldwide on February 7th.