HBO Max streaming censored broadcast version of ‘Birds of Prey’

Even though it became the DCEU’s lowest-grossing movie right before the pandemic gave it an excuse, Birds of Prey almost instantly found life as a cult favorite, with fans celebrating the Harley Quinn spinoff on the first anniversary of its release earlier this year.

While a direct sequel looks increasingly unlikely, Margot Robbie did return in The Suicide Squad and Jurnee Smollett’s Black Canary is getting her own HBO Max standalone feature, so the mythology first introduced in Cathy Yan’s irreverent R-rated romp will at least continue on in some fashion.

The theatrical cut of Birds of Prey left HBO Max on the fourteenth of this month, but now that it’s airing on broadcast television, the neutered TV-14 version of the comic book blockbuster is back on WarnerMedia’s in-house platform, although it’s hard to imagine anyone being desperate to check out a watered-down version of the movie.

The blood is largely removed, the profanity is overdubbed with more family-friendly insults and Renee Montoya’s “I Shaved My Balls For This” T-shirt has simply been blurred out. It’s a bizarre move for HBO Max to drop Birds of Prey and then have the broadcast edition appear less than two weeks later, but it’s hardly going to trouble the most-watched list.