Cathy Yan – from ace journalist to director
LOS ANGELES: As a top journalist with the Wall Street Journal, Cathy Yan was so prolific that several of her stories would make it to the front page in the same edition.
She’s bringing the same spunk to movie-making.
China-born Cathy has just been named as the first Asian director for a superhero movie.
Warner Bros and DC Entertainment have chosen Cathy to be the director of an untitled girl gang movie, likely the next superhero film to be graced by Suicide Squad scenestealer Harley Quinn, in the form of Margot Robbie.
Cathy, who is now based in New York City, was raised in Hong Kong and Washington. She had graduated with an MBA from NYU’s Stern School of Business and an MFA from the Tisch Graduate Film Programme.
She used to work with auteurs like award-winning director Jia Zhangke, who had executive produced her movie Dead Pigs, financed by Alibaba Pictures.
Dead Pigs was a movie on a mysterious stream of pig carcasses floats silently toward China’s populous economic hub, Shanghai. As authorities struggle to explain the phenomenon, characters intersect. They include a down- and- out pig farmer with a youthful heart struggles to make ends meet, an upwardly mobile landowner fighting gentrification against an American expat seeking a piece of the Chinese dream, a romantic busboy hides his job from his father, and a rich young woman struggling to find her independence.
The movie went on to win the World Cinema Dramatic Award For Ensemble Acting at Sundance last January.
Details on her superhero movie are sketchy, but it is based on Birds of Prey, which in the DC universe teams Quinn with several other crime fighters, namely Black Canary, Barbara Gordon ( Batgirl) and Huntress. It is not confirmed if all of them will be characters in the film.
What is clear is that both the main characters and most of the creative braintrust are female, remarkable for a studio- sized superhero film. The script was written by Christina Hodson, who wrote the Transformers spin- off Bumblebee, and just got hired to write the Batgirl movie.
This film looks cleared to start production by year’s end or early next year, after Robbie completes Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
She is negotiating to star alongside Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt in the Quentin Tarantino- directed film for Sony Pictures. The other Harley Quinn films are still under construction.
That includes the Suicide Squad sequel to be directed by Gavin O’Connor. Two others, Harley Quinn Vs The Joker and Gotham City Sirens with Suicide Squad helmer David Ayer, seem further in the distance.
Details on her superhero movie are sketchy, but it is based on Birds of Prey, which in the DC universe teams Quinn with several other crime fighters, namely Black Canary, Barbara Gordon (Batgirl) and Huntress.