Margo Robbie recently spoke to Collider about the upcoming Harley Quinn film. She said that :
“I pitched the idea of an R-rated girl gang film including Harley, because I was like, ‘Harley needs friends.’ Harley loves interacting with people, so don’t ever make her do a standalone film,” Robbie told the site. “She’s got to be with other people, it should be a girl gang. I wasn’t seeing enough girl gangs on screen, especially in the action space. So that was always a big part of it.”
The actress continued, “And then of course having a female director to tell that story. And giving a female director the chance to do big budget stuff. They always get ‘Here’s the tiny little film’… I was like, ‘I love action. I love action films. I’m a girl. What, are we meant to only like a specific thing’?” So it was a hugely important to find a female director for this, if possible. But at the end of the day — male, female — the best director gets the job and Cathy was the best director.”
Christina Hodson is working on the script. Cathy Yan has been tapped by Warner Bros and DC Entertainment to be the director of an untitled girl gang movie, expected to be based on Birds of Prey and starring Harley Quinn, portrayed by Margot Robbie.
Yan was chosen over other well established male directors, with Robbie reportedly insisting on a female director for the project. Yan's first feature was the indie film Dead Pigs, which won the World Cinema Dramatic Award For Ensemble Acting at Sundance last January. Yan was a Wall Street Journal reporter, before transitioning to film, and one of the paper’s youngest reporters to land multiple stories on the front page. She made several short films before Dead Pigs. Her presentation for the Birds of Prey project was reportedly exceptional.
The currently untitled film is based on Birds of Prey, which teams up Harley Quinn with several other crime fighters, most notably Black Canary, Barbara Gordon (Batgirl) and Huntress. It is not clear at this time which characters will be involved in the film. The screenplay was written by Christina Hodson, whose credits include Unforgettable, Shut In, and Bumblebee. She was also just brought on board to write the Batgirl movie. This film is expected to begin production sometime around the end of the year or early next year, once Robbie has finished Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.