“Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn),” or just “Birds of Prey” if you wish to be boring, was a breath of contemporary air when it dropped in 2020. The second women-led DC Prolonged Universe movie after 2017’s “Surprise Girl,” “Birds of Prey” is a classy, hilarious, and satisfying superhero film that places Margot Robbie’s splendidly chaotic Harley Quinn entrance and heart in a reluctant crew comprised of her, Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), Black Canary (Jurnee Smollett), and Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez).
This all-star group of Batman-adjacent characters wanted an excellent villain to work, and it received one in Ewan McGregor’s Roman “Black Masks” Sionis. The “Star Battle” and “Trainspotting” actor portrays Sionis as a deliciously ruthless narcissist whose romance-coded relationship along with his high henchman, Victor Zsasz (Chris Messina), has shades of obsession and management. Intimidating, unpredictable, and infinitely entertaining, the Black Masks is an ideal foe for Quinn and her allies, which makes it stunning to study that the villain virtually wasn’t within the film in any respect. In an interview with Leisure Weekly, Robbie revealed that her character was initially imagined to face off towards none aside from the Penguin:
“The primary draft that Christina [Hodson] wrote of ‘Birds of Prey’, the villain was the Penguin. After which [‘The Batman’ director] Matt Reeves mentioned, ‘Do not use the Penguin. I’ll use him in my factor.’ And so we swapped it to Black Masks.”
Issues labored out simply effective for each Black Masks and the Penguin
Farrell, who famously went on to play Reeves’ imaginative and prescient of Gotham’s bird-themed crime lord, was current through the Leisure Weekly interview and was appropriately fascinated by the data. (Farrell and Robbie had been selling their new movie collectively, “A Massive Daring Stunning Journey.”) He even requested that Robbie ship him a duplicate of the early “Birds of Prey” draft that featured the Penguin.
Farrell’s curiosity within the topic is comprehensible, contemplating how dedicated the actor has been to the function of Oz “The Penguin” Cobb in Reeves’ Batman Epic Crime Saga. Since making his debut because the character in 2022’s “The Batman,” the actor has gone to reprise the Batman rogue for HBO’s acclaimed crime drama collection “The Penguin.” Certainly, whereas Farrell was initially involved that Warner Bros. would possibly cancel “The Penguin,” he went on to win an Emmy for the present as an alternative.
As such, this seems to be a type of joyful instances the place issues labored out properly for everybody. Farrell’s prosthetics-heavy, brutal mobster tackle the Penguin has been extraordinarily well-received, and admittedly, it is laborious to think about any model of the character who could be a greater villain match for “Birds of Prey” than McGregor’s Black Masks turned out to be. Nonetheless, this information does make one marvel simply what the “Birds of Prey” model of the Penguin would’ve been like, particularly since Robbie instructed Farrell that the character would have been “superb.” Maybe Farrell will sooner or later let the world know after he is had the time to leaf via that early “Birds of Prey” script.
You may catch Colin Farrell and Margot Robbie in “A Massive Daring Stunning Journey” when the movie opens in theaters on September 19, 2025.
