Back in May of 2016, three months before the release of Suicide Squad, it was announced that Harley Quinn would be getting a standalone movie.
Fast forward to almost four years later, we're just a few days away from the anticipated release of this Harley Quinn stand-alone movie, which is now known as Birds of Prey. Regarding this movie, there has also been a question that has been on the mind for a while now: What was it like behind the scenes?
After meeting director Cathy Yan over coffee that turned into breakfast pizzas and mimosas five years ago, Harley Quinn's portrayer Margot Robbie, pitched in an idea of a Harley Quinn standalone movie. In fact, it was pitched in while Robbie was still in the process of filming Suicide Squad.
“I first actually pitched the notion when we were actually still shooting 'Suicide Squad'. I kept saying like, ‘Oh, Harley does so much better when she has people to play with’. I just kept thinking that in real life I had such a girl gang, like my group of girlfriends, and I just want Harley to have a girl gang. I’d been reading a ton of the comics, anything in involving Harley, and one of the separate line of comics is in the Birds of Prey," Says Robbie.
Though filming was also supposed to take place in Atlanta and Savannah, Georgia, all of the filming for the film took place in Los Angeles, California starting from January 2019 until April 15, 2019. Along the way throughout the process of filming, Yan started to give insight into what the movie was going to be like.
"Pulp Fiction meets Rashomon" says Yan, describing the movie.
Yan then went on to say that it was set almost in a "parallel universe."
"Who are the girls in Harley's girl gang?" You're probably wondering. Well, here's your answer.
The Huntress (portrayed by Mary Elizabeth Winstead), The Black Canary (portrayed by Jurnee Smollett-Bell), and Renee Montoya (portrayed by Rosie Perez), all of whom Harley Quinn assembles together in order to save Cassandra Cain, (portrayed by newcomer, Ella Jay Basco) who is ordered to be killed after stealing a diamond from Sionis/Black Mask.
Talking about the girl gang, this is what Robbie gave out:
"Yeah, it’s an eclectic group, which I love – that everyone has a distinct and different personality, and is coming from a different angle, I suppose. You got Renee, whose set of morals… her moral compass points a very different way to Harley’s and Canary’s. Everyone’s kind of got their own rule of ethics that they abide by, and they kind of conflict with each other, which I think is always interesting in an ensemble." says Robbie.
Now that we're only days away from the release of Birds Of Prey, we can say that we're feeling excited to see how this film comes out. Did Margot Robbie come up with something great when she said that she wanted to do a standalone movie? Right now, we say that she most certainly did!