‘Barbie’ ending a 4-film streak of box office bombs means Margot Robbie is finally out of the DC doghouse

Barbenheimer, smarbenheimer — the summer’s big battle of the blockbusters has ultimately turned out to be a rather one-sided affair as Barbie has well and truly trumped over Oppenheimer at the box office. At last count, Greta Gerwig’s Mattel movie is shockingly close to dethroning the final Harry Potter film to become Warner Bros.’s highest-grossing release literally ever. All in all, then, it seems Margot Robbie‘s star power is now at full wattage again, which might spell good things for her DC future.

According to scooper MyTimeToShineHello, the Australian actress is all set to return as the one, the only, the infamous Harley Quinn in the rebooted DCU. On the one hand, this is hardly surprising given that Robbie worked with new studio chief James Gunn on The Suicide Squad and the two are known to have got on like a house on fire. On the other, though, this rumor marks a sharp turn from how things looked for Robbie’s leading lady status B.B. (Before Barbie).

To put it simply, Robbie had a disastrous couple of years from 2020 to 2022. Although she was hardly off our screens, all four of her major movie releases tanked at the box office. Paramount’s Babylon, 20th Century Studios’ Amsterdam, and, most notably, two DC flicks — Birds of Prey and The Suicide Squad — failed to prove that Robbie’s name could fill multiplex seats. Thanks to the phenomenal success of Barbie, however, any worry that she’s not a tentpole star has definitely been wiped clean away.

Of course, talk about her DCU return is very much just a rumor for now, but it does get our hopes up that we’ve got more of Dr. Harleen Quinzel ahead of us as Gunn’s ambitious DCU Chapter One plans unfold over the next few years.