Filmmaker Cathy Yan is joining the DC universe.
She is in talks to direct an untitled DC film featuring Margot Robbie’s Suicide Squad character.
The Warner Bros. film is expected to be based on the Birds of Prey property, which centers on a female-led team that debuted in the comics in 1995 and has included characters over the years such as Barbara Gordon/Batgirl, Poison Ivy, Catwoman and Katana (who was played by Karen Fukuhara in Suicide Squad). The project has a script by Christina Hodson, whom Warner Bros. hired last week to write Batgirl after Joss Whedon exited the project.
Warners isn’t copping to Birds of Prey, but is developing it under the rubrick of the “untitled Harley Quinn girl gang movie.” Sources are describing the project as an all-female variation on Suicide Squad.
Robbie debuted her take on Harley Quinn in 2016’s Suicide Squad, which brought the character to even greater levels of popularity and inspired Warner Bros. to develop several projects centering on the anti-hero, including a Suicide Squad sequel and a movie focusing on Joker and Harley Quinn.
Robbie is producing through her LuckyChap Entertainment, along with Sue Kroll via her Kroll & Co. Entertainment and Bryan Unkeless of Clubhouse Pictures.
Yan is an up-and-coming filmmaker whose feature directorial debut Dead Pigs earned strong reviews at Sundance earlier this year. The dark comedy won the World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award for Ensemble Acting. In addition to also helming several shorts, Yan has worked as a Wall Street Journal reporter based out of New York, Hong Kong and Beijing.
Yan, who was born in China and was raised in Hong Kong and Washington, would become the first Asian woman to direct a big-budget superhero movie. The move would also continue Warner Bros.’ track record of hiring female filmmakers for its comic book properties. the studio has Patty Jenkins returning for Wonder Woman 2, while Ava DuVernay is set to helm the comic book epic New Gods.
Yan is repped by CAA and attorney Jerry Dasti of Sloss Eckhouse LawCo.
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