The Harley Quinn Movie Will Reportedly Have a History-Making Director in Cathy Yan
Harley Quinn may have been officially named the most popular Halloween costume of 2016 and also helped earn Suicide Squad its Oscar for Best Makeup and Hairstyling, but soon enough, the antihero will be making history in an even more impressive way. Deadline reports this week that the powers that be behind the upcoming standalone Harley Quinn movie have finally chosen a director—and the choice is a pretty big deal for the DC Comics universe.
According to Deadline, though negotiations haven’t yet been finalized, Warner Bros. and DC Entertainment have officially tapped Cathy Yan to direct the film. It’s notable that Yan has only directed one feature-length movie in her career: the low-budget indie film Dead Pigs, which won the World Cinema Dramatic Award for Ensemble Acting at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, and which Yan also wrote. Yan will be just the second woman to direct a DC comic book film, after Wonder Woman‘s Patty Jenkins and will be the first-ever Asian woman to helm a superhero film (she was born in China and raised in Hong Kong and Washington, D.C., according to The Hollywood Reporter). Per Deadline, Yan’s hiring was partly motivated by Harley Quinn actor Margot Robbie’s own “firm” desire to have a female director for the Suicide Squad spinoff, which she’ll be co-producing.
Warner Bros. and DC settled on the script for the project nearly two years ago. The film will be based on Birds of Prey, a series of comic books that revolves around the titular group of female superheroes, which through the years has included Batgirl, Black Canary, and the Huntress, among others; TheWrap reported in November 2016 that the Birds of Prey script was being written by Christina Hodson. This won’t be Hodson’s first foray into the DC Universe: Earlier this month, Deadline confirmed that she had taken over scriptwriting duties for the upcoming solo Batgirl film after Joss Whedon quit the project in February.
Since the release of Suicide Squad, Warner Bros. and DC have been in talks to create a whole host of films featuring Harley Quinn, the supervillain alter ego of psychologist Dr. Harleen Quinzel. Not only is a Suicide Squad sequel reportedly in the works, but there have also been reports of a Harley Quinn vs The Joker film pitting Harley against her on-and-off boyfriend, as well as one based on another, more nefarious girl group in the DC Universe, the Gotham City Sirens. Though the status of those films is currently unknown, at least we know the Birds of Prey will be flying onto screens sooner rather than later.