Margot Robbie has revealed that her path as Harley Quinn in Birds of Prey nearly crossed with Colin Farrell’s take on Oswald Cobblepot, long before the two shared the screen in their new film A Big Bold Beautiful Journey.
Speaking with Farrell in an interview for Entertainment Weekly, Robbie explained that the original script for the 2020 DC film had the Penguin as the main villain.
“The first draft that Christina [Hodson] wrote of Birds of Prey, the villain was the Penguin,” she recalled.
“And then [The Batman director/writer] Matt Reeves said, ‘Don’t use the Penguin. I’m going to use him in my thing.’ And so we swapped it to Black Mask [played by Ewan McGregor].”
Robbie last appeared as Harley Quinn in James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad in 2021, and while fans continue to wonder about her return, Gunn has teased that her future in the DC Universe will be “revealed down the line.”
His Superman, which premiered last month, kicked off a brand-new chapter for DC under the “Gods and Monsters” phase, separate from Reeves’ Batman Epic Crime Saga, which began with The Batman in 2022 and continued with last year’s HBO Max spinoff The Penguin.
Reeves is also moving forward with The Batman Part II.
After Gunn addressed concerns about the delays, the director and co-writer Mattson Tomlin confirmed in June that the script is complete.
In a recent letter to Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders, the studio announced that production is officially scheduled to begin in the spring, with the sequel set to hit theaters on October 1, 2027.
For Robbie, the almost-crossover with Farrell’s Penguin is now a full-circle moment, as the two finally share the spotlight on screen, this time not as adversaries in Gotham, but as co-stars in a new cinematic adventure.
