A spinoff of The Suicide Squad, Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) focused on Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn, also introducing the titular team to the DCEU, including Black Canary, Huntress, Renee Montoya, and Cassandra Cain. Set in Gotham City, the movie explored a new side to the city’s occupants apart from Batman while featuring the Batman villain Black Mask, played by Ewan McGregor. It almost featured the DCEU introduction of the Penguin, but Matt Reeves’ The Batman prevented that.
According to Margot Robbie, the original plan for Birds of Prey was to feature the Penguin as the main villain. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly to promote her latest film, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, alongside current Penguin actor Colin Farrell, Robbie shocked her co-star, saying that his character was in the first version of Birds of Prey before Matt Reeves requested they not use him. Robbie described the Penguin in the script as “amazing,” and Farrell asked if she still had the original script and if he could read it. Regarding the change, Robbie said:
“The first draft that Christina [Hodson] wrote of Birds of Prey, the villain was the Penguin. And then [director/writer] Matt Reeves said, ‘Don’t use the Penguin. I’m going to use him in my thing,’ And so we swapped it to Black Mask.”
What The DCEU’s Penguin Might Have Been
The reveal that the DCEU almost featured the Penguin is a big deal. Across the DCEU, many of Batman’s iconic foes were revealed to populate the world. The Joker (Jared Leto), Harley Quinn (Robbie), and Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) were introduced in Suicide Squad, while Justice League ended with a tease of Deathstroke (Joe Manganiello), who was intended to be the main villain in The Batman when it was a DCEU movie. Both Riddler and Mad Hatter were named-dropped in Peacemaker Season 1. Black Mask’s introduction in Birds of Prey was a major addition to Gotham City’s criminal underworld, but it might have been very different with the Penguin.
In terms of development timeline, the two movies did overlap. Christina Hodson was hired to write the Birds of Prey script in November 2016, while Matt Reeves was hired to write and direct The Batman in February 2017. Although Birds of Prey began development first and started filming before Robert Pattinson was cast as Batman, it seems that the Penguin’s status as one of Batman’s core villains made it more fitting to include him in their Batman-led project. Before the COVID-19 pandemic delayed The Batman back to 2022, both Birds of Prey and The Batman were due out a year apart from one another, so it made sense at the time to not have conflicting depictions of the Penguin.
Even though the Penguin is one of Batman’s classic foes, in the early part of the 21st century, the character had faded into the background a bit following his exclusion from Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy. Colin Farrell’s portrayal of the character in both The Batman and the critically acclaimed The Penguin has now given the villain a new fanbase, one that eagerly awaits his return in The Batman – Part II. Hopefully Robbie’s Harley Quinn remains in the new DCU and one day has a chance to cross paths with her own version of the character.
Birds of Prey
- Release Date
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February 7, 2020
- Runtime
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109 minutes
- Director
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Cathy Yan
- Writers
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Christina Hodson
