![]() ![]() ![]() However, Warners didn’t put Harley Quinn front and center in the title. “Both are part of the complex and diverse DC world.” While “Birds of Prey” follows a key character in “Suicide Squad” and takes place after the first film, the studio marketed it not as a sequel, but a standalone spinoff not unlike “Joker.” “They are two standalone stories,” said Kroll. The studio didn’t allow “Birds of Prey” to ride on the back of “Suicide Squad.” Still: That doesn’t account for the entire gap.Ģ. So the R rating lost the movie plenty of paying customers. According to Cinemascore, younger people liked the movie the most. This suggests what marketing gurus call “lack of urgency.” Truth is, a lot of teens under 17 wanted to see the movie, and their parents wouldn’t let them. Opening stats show a gap between tracking and actual attendance. Nevertheless, the studio agreed to create its first R-rated DCEU movie. Warners resisted conventional wisdom shows that despite R-rated Marvel hits such as “Deadpool,” most comic-book movies reach a wider audience with a PG rating. Robbie persuaded the studio to go with an unleashed, potty-mouthed, substance-abusing, uber-violent Harley Quinn in a local Gotham story with street-level stakes. She’s unlike anyone else we’ve seen on screen.” We’re seeing her on her own, not in the shadow of Joker, her emancipation, finding her own voice and her own two feet to stand on. “Having Harley Quinn as our narrator and mouthpiece, the lens for the whole story, gives you the crazy, fun, and poppy tone. “They did let us go pretty far,” said Hodson. Their final take was inspired by “Trainspotting” and “True Romance,” and they pitched the studio in 2015, before “Suicide Squad” was finished. They raided the DC library, ingesting stacks of comics, texting each other their favorite storylines and panels. From their first meeting, Robbie and Hodson pursued an unfettered Gotham with Quinn at its center. The actress developed the script with writer Christina Hodson (“Batgirl”) and eventually, in-house producer Sue Kroll, the former Warners marketing chief. Margot Robbie wanted “Birds of Prey” to be R rated. Here’s how this female-empowering action comedy turned out so well, yet floundered at the box office. Robbie is a gifted action comedienne with danger in her veins. Written, directed, and produced by women (including Robbie), “Birds of Prey” is cohesive and visually entertaining. That movie was critic proof, opening to $134 million, and as the pink-and-blue pigtailed roller-skating Harley Quinn, Robbie became a global movie star. Is ‘Hoping’ to Get Christopher Nolan Back After ‘Oppenheimer’ SplitĪnd “Birds of Prey” got much better reviews (deservedly) than its predecessor. David Ayer’s PG-13 “Suicide Squad” was a series of violent, percussive action scenes of predictable and often nonsensical mayhem. Now the film has been hastily renamed “Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey,” in hopes that the clearer title, and its improved SEO, will mean a healthier gross. However, “Birds of Prey,” opened last weekend to $33.3 million, well below box-office expectations of $45 million-$55 million, based on preview testing (88% in the top two boxes for women, 86% people under 30), upbeat fanboy and media reactions, and (clearly inflated) advance tracking. Even Todd Phillips’ risky R-rated origin myth “Joker,” starring Oscar-winner Joaquin Phoenix as a mentally ill chaos agent, turned into a $1 billion global home run.Īnd then there’s the film formerly known as “ Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn),” a title that distanced itself from the DC film that introduced Margot Robbie as Quinn, 2016 box-office smash “Suicide Squad” ($746 million worldwide, with its own James Gunn reboot in the works for 2021). Usually, when a studio greenlights a comic-book spin-off, it’s as close to sure-fire as you can get. ![]()
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