Ewan McGregor To Play Black Mask In DC’s Birds Of Prey

The long-in-development Birds of Prey movie has burst into life. And not a moment too soon.

Last month, for instance, we learned that both Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Jurnee Smollett-Bell were circling the roles of Huntress and Black Canary, respectively, as Warner Bros. continues to locate its ensemble cast for the female-fronted spinoff.

Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn is still at the heart of the film, of course, given the Aussie actress is also expected to produce the pic and help director Cathy Yan bring to life her vision of Gotham’s leading ladies. Together, they’ll be going up against the villainous Black Mask, and while Jason Statham was once tipped for the coveted role, we now have word that Ewan McGregor – who was also linked to it – has been brought on board.

For those who might not be familiar with the Gotham City mob boss, he leads the False Face Society gang and in the source material, he murdered his own parents so that he could seize control of their company. He was a horrible businessman, however, and lost it all, blaming several people for his downfall, including Mr. Bruce Wayne aka Batman.

But as we know, Birds of Prey is set in a Bat-free Gotham City – even Batgirl has been ruled out of the DC adaptation – so it’ll fall on Huntress, Black Canary and the Clown Princess of Crime, Harley Quinn, to set aside their differences and deal with whatever threat Black Mask ultimately ends up posing in the film.

Though he first appeared in the pages of Batman #386 back in 1985, and has featured in countless comics since, we still haven’t seen the villain on the big screen, so to hear that he’s coming to Birds of Prey and being played by a fantastic actor like Ewan McGregor at that, is certainly exciting and only has us even more eager to see how the female-fronted spinoff fares when it hits theaters on February 7th, 2020.