No longer is WB’s Suicide Squad spinoff titled Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn). And thank gosh for that.
Hoping to make things easier in regards to search engine optimization, the Powers That Be over at Warner Bros. made the smart decision to introduce a new, truncated title – Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey, to be specific – so that potential ticket buyers could “find it more quickly.”
Or so says Birds of Prey producer (and former WB exec) Sue Kroll, who recently explained that the surprise rebranding is “simply a display change for exhibition [purposes].” Word is they suggested Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey in hopes of improving SEO and getting the movie in front of as many audience members as possible. But that’s not the only change being made in hopes of moving more tickets.
As evidenced by the Tweet below, the Japanese release of the film will come with a PG-12 rating in that region, which is apparently equivalent to an American PG and presumably means that a lot of the strong language will be removed and some of the more violent action scenes could be trimmed down, too.
It’s not out in that region until next month, so we can only speculate for now in regards to how it’ll be edited, but you can check out the trailer which confirms the new rating below:
If you are in #Japan and wanna try your luck, just submit your subscription in the website below in order to win one of the 30 pairs. https://t.co/HPEgnFGf22
— Luiz Fernando (@Luiz_Fernando_J) February 25, 2020
Whether this will work or not – and more important, whether it’ll harm the overall quality of the movie or not – remains to be seen, but it’s an interesting move nonetheless. If you ask us, it probably won’t do very much, but at this point, the studio is no doubt hoping to squeeze as much money out of the rest of Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey‘s theatrical run as possible.
In any case, even if this fails, WB can at least expect significantly better numbers from the next DCEU release, as Wonder Woman 1984 reaches cinemas on June 5th and will definitely be more on the PG-13 side.