The DCEU suffered a minor misstep earlier this year when Birds of Prey bombed at the box office, becoming the lowest-grossing entry in the franchise by a wide margin after barely making it past the $200 million mark. A number of reasons were cited for the movie’s poor performance, not least a confused marketing campaign.
After a soft opening weekend, the title was hastily changed to put Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn front and center, but it didn’t yield much of an improvement in the pic’s commercial prospects. Despite generally enthusiastic reviews from critics, it didn’t seem like audiences had much interest in the female-driven spinoff at all, causing the studio to have second thoughts about Harley becoming one of the DCEU’s marquee names.
The R-rating also restricted Birds of Prey‘s chances of finding success, and Warner Bros. will no doubt draw a line under that particular experiment after alienating a huge part of their audience and watching the movie suffer as a result. Harley Quinn will be back next summer when she takes top billing in James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad, but the future for the rest of the ensemble remains unclear.
Despite his chances of returning looking slim, in a recent interview, actor Chris Messina admitted that if he was offered the chance to play Victor Zsasz again, he wouldn’t hesitate to accept.
“I loved playing that character and I love that group of people, that was a ball and something very new to me. I’d love to get another shot at that character, see him in another light. I don’t have any plans to do it, but if they called, I’d go.”
The mere existence of The Suicide Squad proves that WB are happy to reboot aspects of their franchise if they believe it’ll result in a superior take on the material, and unfortunately, it looks likely that the majority of Birds of Prey‘s cast won’t be invited back for any further outings as the DCEU solidifies its lineup of upcoming projects.