Margot Robbie may have played the lead role and acted as one of the producers, but it would be doing a disservice to the rest of the ensemble to call Birds of Prey a solo movie for the actress’ Harley Quinn.
Technically, her name wasn’t even in the title. Even the staunchest of supporters probably don’t refer to it as the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn, even if Warner Bros. did alter its moniker slightly to Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey (which definitely didn’t have anything to do with the R-rated actioner scoring the lowest box office opening for a DC Comics adaptation since the disastrous Jonah Hex a decade previously).
After just about scraping past the $200 million mark globally, which was still enough to have fans celebrating it as the highest-grossing superhero blockbuster of a pandemic-ravaged 2020, it looks as though we’re not going to be getting any sequels. However, Robbie will be back in August’s The Suicide Squad, taking top billing among the cast after playing third fiddle to Will Smith and Jared Leto in David Ayer’s opener.
In a social media Q&A session with fans, writer/director James Gunn was asked if he’d ever consider helming a standalone Harley Quinn adventure, to which he replied with a brief but firm “I definitely would yes.” While that’s far from enough to have Birds of Prey fans popping corks on the champagne, Gunn was offered his choice of any DCEU project he wanted when Warner Bros. swooped in following his firing by Disney, so if The Suicide Squad hits big and he decides to stick around the franchise, then it’s certainly not completely off the table.