Mary Elizabeth Winstead Excited to Learn How to Use Bow and Arrow for 'Birds of Prey'

Warner Bros. cast Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Helana Bertinelli, aka Huntress in the upcoming Birds of Prey movie. Winstead sounds exciting about the new role, specifically one new skill she gets to learn.

Winstead spoke to PeopleTV about playing the DC Comics vigilante just after receiving the news herself.

"I got the call when I was at the airport to come here, yesterday, so its super recent, but for the past couple of weeks I've been talking about it with the director and going in and meeting with different people involved with the project, so becoming more and more familiar with it," Winstead said. "It was great news to get. I'm really, really excited to get to learn how to use a bow and arrow."

We should note that Huntress doesn't actually use a bow and arrow. She's known for her signature crossbow. Perhaps the film version of Huntress will change that up, but it seems more likely that Winstead simply misspoke.

Winstead is also looking forward to digging into Huntress' history and motivations.

"Her backstory is interesting and kind of her emotional reasons for doing what she does, I think, are rooted in something very grounded and real, which has always been kind of the hard thing for me to find whenever I've been dipping my toe into the superhero world," Winstead said. "I'm a little bit like, 'What am I really going to be playing? Who is this person?' And sometimes that's been a bit hard for me to find, and this one I think is really interesting."

Winstead played Royal Pain in the 2005 superhero high school comedy Sky High. She also played Ramona Flowers in the cult hit comic book movie adaptation of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. She says that Birds of Prey is going to break new ground for the superhero genre.

"I think it's exciting to be in a film that will hopefully reach a lot of people, and I think this one, in particular, is exciting because we're trying to do something that hasn't quite been done before in the superhero realm, in terms of it being really female-led in front of and behind the camera, and I think some of the idea that they're playing with are really new. So that's really exciting to me and the fact that might reach an audience on a wider level. So I'm really looking forward to that, to hopefully connecting with those fans, and hopefully makings something that is new to them but also does justice to the comic book heroes that they love so much."

According to Winstead, Birds of Prey will begin filming very early in 2019.

Are you excited for the Birds of Prey movie? Let us know in the comments!

Birds of Prey is set to open on Feb. 7, 2020.

Other upcoming DC Extended Universe movies include Aquaman on Dec. 21st, Wonder Woman 1984 on Nov. 1, 2019, Shazam on April 5, 2019, Cyborg in 2020, and Green Lantern Corps in 2020.