The brains behind the DCEU have proven that they’re not exactly against the idea of deviating from their original plans for the shared universe, and the franchise’s current trajectory looks a lot different from how it was originally mapped out when they first announced a huge slate of movies back in 2014.
Zack Snyder still hasn’t finished Justice League, although admittedly there was a lengthy Joss Whedon-led detour that eventually brought the project full circle after a relentless fan campaign, and while Henry Cavill may have finally committed his future to the DCEU after much speculation, it still doesn’t look like that Man of Steel sequel will be happening anytime soon, either.
Batman is already in the midst of another reboot, Jared Leto’s Joker has quietly been swept under the rug, and the previously announced Flash, Cyborg, Green Lantern and Gotham City Sirens movies are all mired in the various depths of development hell. In short, there’s a lot of projects that have been announced over the years that DC and Warner Bros. have either grown bored with or abandoned completely.
We may not have gotten David Ayer’s Gotham City Sirens, but the franchise still managed to deliver a female-driven spinoff with Cathy Yan’s Birds of Prey, which subsequently bombed at the box office despite generally solid reviews. Having just scraped past $200 million globally, a sequel seems highly unlikely, with Harley Quinn’s position as one of the franchise’s most marketable characters now under threat as a result. Not only that, but we’ve now heard that the movie’s cast could end up being the subjects of more sweeping changes to the mythology.
According to our intel – which comes from the same sources who told us a Justice League Dark show, Green Lantern series and the Justice League Snyder Cut are all coming to HBO Max – the studio are still considering the idea of using the Flashpoint arc to make further changes to established canon and erase things that didn’t work so well in the past. And while they remain keen on keeping Harley Quinn and Black Mask around, a few of the supporting players in Birds of Prey, like Black Canary and Huntress might not be so lucky.
Nothing’s been decided on just yet, but we’re told that both roles could be recast and the events of the movie may be re-written/wiped from continuity via Flashpoint. Meanwhile, it’s also said that the same fate could befall other Prey characters like Cassandra Cain and Renee Montoya.
Of course, Margot Robbie is already set to return in The Suicide Squad, while Ewan McGregor’s performance went down so well with Warner Bros. that they want him to stick around, but given that we’ll probably never see a Birds of Prey sequel, it looks like the rest of the titular team could wind up becoming the latest in a long line of DCEU recastings.
