August delivered the good news that Birds of Prey was finally getting a follow-up in the form of a Black Canary solo movie for Jurnee Smollett, with the project seeing the actress team up again with Lovecraft Country creator Misha Green, who’s penning the script. It seems the studio has a lot of faith in Smollett, too, as a surprising new report suggests that Dinah Lance could be about to get an unexpected promotion and lead the next iteration of the Justice League.
Giant Freakin Robot is reporting that their sources have revealed Warner Bros. is planning to have Black Canary be the leader of the Justice League in an upcoming sequel. Details are vague at this point, but GFR’s intel states that the follow-up will be a “sequel/soft reboot” of the superhero team, which suggests it’ll take a similar approach to The Suicide Squad. Specifically, it’ll roughly be set in the same continuity and may feature a couple of familiar faces, but will be mostly standalone.
There’s also no word on who could join Dinah in this revamped JLA roster, but GFR speculates that this version of the group could be more like a team-up of the studio’s various streaming stars. Just as Black Canary is headed to HBO Max, so is Leslie Grace’s Batgirl film and Blue Beetle, starring Xolo Maridueña. While this lineup would presumably lack heavy-hitters such as Superman and Batman, it could be a fun way to give the DCEU streaming projects some interconnectivity and something to build towards.
This same source has previously claimed that Dinah’s future husband, Green Arrow, will make his cinematic debut in her solo film, so the Emerald Archer has a good chance of landing a place on this retooled roll call as well. With this sort of lineup, the project sounds closer to Justice League International than the classic JLA, but it’s currently being referred to as a Justice League sequel, possibly the one producer Charles Roven hinted at before.
