Once upon a time, David Ayer was set to follow up his DCU debut in Suicide Squad with a spinoff set in the shared comic book universe, but his plans for Gotham City Sirens eventually fell by the wayside after the reception to his first stab at a blockbuster comic book adaptation was torn to shreds by critics and widely-panned by even the most forgiving of audiences.
Of course, Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn did get to headline her own solo adventure further on down the line, but Birds of Prey suffered from the complete opposite in fortunes from Suicide Squad. Largely praised by critics for its irreverent tone and infectious enthusiasm, it flopped at the box office and ranks as the DCU’s lowest-grossing release that doesn’t have a pandemic-shaped asterisk next to its name.
It didn’t take long for Warner Bros. to start marketing the film as simply Birds of Prey, presumably because it was too much of an unnecessary mouthful to dedicate so much space to the subtitle of and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn, especially when everyone was simply referring to it as Birds of Prey anyway.
However, thanks to a recent insight shared by Ayer on Twitter, it turns out that the subtitle may have been an indirect slap in the face for the filmmaker’s initial vision for the movie. What was Robbie’s arc set to be driven by when Ayer first cranked out the script and called action on Suicide Squad? Funnily enough, the emancipation of one Harley Quinn.
It’s either a coincidence or something more sinister and malicious on the part of Warner Bros., because the DC Films hierarchy at the time would have been fully aware of the yarn Ayer was originally planning to spin. It’s the sort of thing you couldn’t make up, and yet another reason why the original conception of Suicide Squad remains so high up on the fandom’s wish-list.
