Birds Of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn), the DCEU film about a team of female anti-heroes, is going in for reshoots ahead of its February 2020 release, and John Wick director Chad Stahelski is going to be punching up the action scenes. 

Savvy John Wick honks will know that Chad Stahelski was only one half of a directing team with stuntman turned director David Leitch. In fact, I believe both of them were stuntmen before going behind the camera on arguably the most beloved original action movie of the last decade.

Correction: they are still doing stunts, both are credited for stunts on Deadpool 2.

John Wick is not my thing but you have to respect the respect they both show for weaponry, tactics, choreography and spatial geometry.

No wonder people love this stuff.

This Will Probably Help Birds Of Prey

I don’t think a lot of genre fans have paid attention to the progress of Birds Of Prey but this is sure to pique their curiosity.

Personally, I’ve never heard of a studio announcing that another director was coming in to shoot specific scenes or types of scenes.

Maybe this is a new marketing tactic to get a specific type of movie-goer — in this case, male gunkata fans — to show up at the theater?

The movie picks up after Suicide Squad, with Batman missing and Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) having left the Joker.

A new crime boss, Black Mask (Ewen McGregor) shows up and Harley teams up with  Black Canary (Jurnee Smollett-Bell), Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead)  and Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez) to take him down.

Is that Jussie Smollett’s sister? Man, we really need to bring back the concept of shame in this country. Maybe collective punishment too — at least socially.

Also showing up are Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco), who has donned the Batgirl mask in the comics, and  Victor Zsasz, a serial killer who carves a line in his body for each of his victims.

Margot Robbie is producing the movie so you know it’s going to be a safe Harley Quinn lovefest with her coming out on top as a Yas Queen who takes out her rage on men — because of course, all men are responsible for what the Joker did.

 Even with these reshoots, Birds of Prey is still a very low-budget event movie with a production cost of around $70 million before the reshoots.

It’s gonna break even at about $200 million, which it should easily make globally in its first weekend. 

Of course, the wrong lesson will be learned and instead of making low-budget event films Hollywood will flood us with a half-dozen low-budget girl-team event films.

Can’t hardly wait.