The Hollywood Reporter recently caught up with Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey director Cathy Yan, and pointed out to the filmmaker that despite reports of the movie being a box office flop, it made 2.4x its production budget. Ford v Ferrari, in comparison, made 2.3x its budget but cost $16 million more to produce than the DC Comics adaptation.
The ironic thing is that James Mangold's movie was considered a box office hit, and when the trade asked Yan if she was frustrated by the apparent double standard from reporters, she talked in detail about Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey's commercial performance back in February.
"Yeah, I think that if you actually look at the details of the budget breakdown...I know that the studio had really high expectations for the movie - as we all did," Yan explained. "There were also undo expectations on a female-led movie, and what I was most disappointed in was this idea that perhaps it proved that we weren’t ready for this yet."
"That was an extra burden that, as a woman-of-color director, I already had on me anyway. So, yes, I think there were certainly different ways you could interpret the success or lack of success of the movie, and everyone has a right to do that. But, I definitely do feel that everyone was pretty quick to jump on a certain angle."
The movie definitely didn't perform the way you would expect a comic book adaptation to these days, so that could explain at least some of the responses. Now, though, Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey has the chance to find a second life on VOD, and Yan was also asked whether her Tweet led to Warner Bros. deciding to give the film an earlier than expected release.
"[The] idea that Birds of Prey can just be another option of something to watch in these times just seemed appropriate and really smart," she said. "So, I just independently did that, and it seemed to get a lot of responses. Then, I heard from [producer] Sue Kroll and my team that it was already in the works at Warner Bros. So, it worked out really nice."
Have you guys checked out Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey on VOD yet?