DC universe’s new visionary
She becomes first Asian female to direct a Warner Bros. superhero movie.
Cathy Yan has been tapped to direct a Harley Quinn movie, the first Asian woman to head a DC film.
Filmmaker Cathy Yan has been tapped by Warner Bros. and DC Entertainment to direct Margot Robbie in an untitled Harley Quinn movie — a hire that makes the Chinese-born Yan the first Asian woman to direct a big-budget superhero installment in the DC universe.
Yan landed the gig just three months after making her feature debut at Sundance with “Dead Pigs” following a search at Warner Bros. to find a female director.
According to Deadline Hollywood, which first broke the news, that priority is largely credited to star Robbie, who will also produce through her LuckyChap Entertainment banner with Sue Kroll of Kroll & Co. Entertainment and Bryan Unkeless for Clubhouse Pictures. Last year, Robbie produced and starred in the multiple Academy Awardnominated “I, Tonya,” skating her way to a lead actress Oscar nomination.
Based on the superheroine team-up DC comic “Birds of Prey,” the Yan-led project is touted as a “Harley Quinn girl gang movie” and is being scripted by fast-rising screenwriter Christina Hodson, who wrote the upcoming “Transformers” Bumblebee movie and was recently tapped to pen a new “Batgirl” script for Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.’ investment in female talent in front of and behind the camera comes on the heels of the enormously profitable performance of 2017’s Gal Gadot-starring standalone “Wonder Woman,” which made over $820 million worldwide. Director Patty Jenkins, who was the first woman director in the DC franchise, is set to return for the sequel. (Last month, “A Wrinkle in Time” director Ava DuVernay signed on to helm “New Gods” for Warner and DC.)
Amid town talk of inclusion riders and representation, Yan’s hire represents a major milestone for women and directors of color in Hollywood, where studio directors remain largely white and male.
Robbie’s Harley Quinn character, the breakout fan favorite of 2016’s “Suicide Squad,” will also factor into a Gavin O’Connor-directed “Suicide Squad” sequel. The studio had been developing other spinoff ideas, including “Harley Quinn vs. the Joker” and “Gotham City Sirens,” but the status of those projects is unknown.
Yan’s first film, meanwhile, has yet to hit theaters stateside. She wrote and directed “Dead Pigs,” a tale set in modern China about five strangers whose stories intersect as a mysterious stream of pig carcasses float toward Shanghai. The film stars Vivian Wu, Zazie Beetz (“Deadpool 2”) and David Rysdahl and premiered in the world dramatic competition at Sundance, where it won the special jury prize for ensemble acting.
Prior to becoming a filmmaker, Yan — who is represented by CAA and attorney Jerry Dasti — was a reporter for the Wall Street Journal in New York, Hong Kong and Beijing.