With Justice League a critical and commercial flop, the future of the DCEU is up in the air at the moment. No doubt there’s been some very serious meetings attended by very serious looking men on the Warner Bros. lot as they try and puzzle out how they could have got it so wrong, and one upshot of all this is that the slate of upcoming DCEU films is currently in flux, with various already announced/in production projects probably on hold. One of these seems to be Gotham City Sirens, intended to be helmed by Suicide Squad director David Ayer.
In what’s probably a bad sign for Harley Quinn, Catwoman and Poison Ivy, the film was even absent from the DC slate announced recently at CCXP. That event confirmed that Wonder Woman 2, Batgirl, Shazam!, Aquaman, Green Lantern Corps, Flashpoint, The Batman, Suicide Squad 2, and Justice League Dark were currently in various stages of production.
Just because GCS was absent from that announcement though doesn’t mean it’s been canned, as according to a Collider interview with Ayer, “it’s still in development.” Now, that could mean all manner of things, from a screenwriter having a run at the concept to see if there’s a worthwhile feature in it to casting, design and location scouting. But still, at the very least, it seems that it’s not totally off the table yet.
Given the rest of the DC slate, Gotham City Sirens is probably one of the safer bets. After all, despite the critical mauling it received, Suicide Squad made serious bank for the company – as well as drawing in a big audience beyond the traditional comic-book movie demographic of 25-34 year old white males.
Whether GCS actually gets made or not though, we might have to wait a bit to see. Warner Bros. are apparently still going ahead with their Joker and Harley spinoff (with Jared Leto and Margot Robbie reprising their Suicide Squad roles) and whatever the Martin Scorsese Joker project turns out to be, so it seems that there’s quite a lot to get through before the studio even begins to think about Ayer’s next DCEU pic.
Again, though, if the director is to be believed, Gotham City Sirens is still alive and well and hopefully we’ll hear more on it soon.