How Birds of Prey is an Origin Story

Harley Quinn’s big screen origin was packed into the Suicide Squad movie back in 2019. The character’s relationship with Joker lead her to a dive into some chemicals which would lead her to possess the well-known paper-white skin and the maniacal attitude fans love her for. Going forward, more of what makes Harley tick will be explored in Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) but the upcoming film won’t focus on Margot Robbie‘s character for its origin story elements. Instead, the film will serve as an origin story for the Birds of Prey characters as a unit.

“It’s more of an origin story for the Birds of Prey and how this version of the group might come together,” Robbie explained. Those characters coming together include Harley Quinn, Black Canary, and Gotham PD’s Renne Montoya.

ComicBook.com visited the set of Birds of Prey in March, watching a sequence from late in the film. All of the core characters were on hand as things seemed to be coming to a head with Gotham City’s gangs closing in and, still, they couldn’t seem to get along very well. Robbie notes, the group is “in its initial stages, of course,” pointing out that there is room for expansion. F-words and verbal jabs are spewed across the room to one another as they decide what’s the best course of action.

“In the future, it could be built out into the more traditional groupings, perhaps, or different versions, because people come in and out of the Birds of Prey,” Robbie says.

As for how the story will be told, its coming from the questionable perspective of Robbie’s Harley. “Harley is the narrator of the story,” she says. “A very unreliable, erratic narrator, which is fun, but it also gives, I think, the audience an opportunity to kind of be inside her brain sometimes and see the world through her eyes at times. I guess you’ll wait and see how well she does or does not get along with the Birds of Prey in the end. But ultimately, I think she is a not a traditional member of the Birds of Prey.”

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Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) hits theaters on