Gotham City Sirens

With a flurry of DCEU announcements this past week  —  we’re getting two more Joker movies with two separate Jokers! The Batman isn’t going to be one big crossover affair!  —  the writing seems to be increasingly on the wall for some of the second-tier Warner Bros. projects. Projects like Gotham City Sirens, the woman-driven comic book movie featuring popular characters Poison Ivy, Harley Quinn, and Catwoman. Gotham City Sirens was noticeably absent from Comic-Con this year, and while alleged director David Ayer recently took to Twitter to reassure everyone of his involvement, things have been quiet. A little too quiet, maybe.

One of the big items to emerge from last weekend’s Comic-Con was the news that Zack Snyder would be taking a backseat in the DCEU going forward. This report - which falls somewhere between a rumor and a substantiated story - spoke directly to a shifting creative hierarchy behind the scenes at Warner Bros. With Geoff Johns now serving as DC’s answer to Marvel’s Kevin Feige, things look increasingly uncertain for the ‘old guard’ of DCEU filmmakers, including both Snyder and Suicide Squad director David Ayer, despite both directors’ involvement in upcoming films.

The spotlight in the DC Extended Universe is squarely on women right now. Wonder Woman is still tying moviegoers in knots; just one more good weekend will make it the second biggest DCEU movie in the U.S., and it could pass Batman v Superman for the top spot not long after. Princess Diana will get back in the spotlight in Justice League this fall, and last summer was all about Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn stealing scenes from Will Smith and the rest of the Suicide Squad. Basically DC sisters are doing it for themselves.

With the recent creative changes behind the scenes of The Batman, Ben Affleck’s solo film probably won’t begin filming until 2018, which leaves a bit of a gap in Warner Bros.’ superhero schedule. Earlier this week, the studio pushed Aquaman back two months, pitting it against Sony’s animated Spider-Man movie in December 2018 — and with nothing else on the docket for the rest of the year, that leaves a sizable gap on the DC schedule.

From the moment a Gotham City Sirens movie was announced, the fancasting begun in earnest. A live-action Catwoman, Harley Quinn, and Poison Ivy team-up is so exciting we can’t even stand it — especially for us ladies, who have yet to see a female-led superhero movie on the big screen post-Iron Man. (No, Jupiter Ascending doesn’t count.) When it was announced on Wednesday that David Ayer would be directing the film and that it was being fast-tracked at Warner Bros., it wasn’t long until the first cast rumor took root and started blooming: Megan Fox could be our Poison Ivy.

Despite some of its more…divisive…aspects, there was at least one part of Suicide Squad that most people could agree on: Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn was pretty great. And it seems that, for as much fun as we had watching her on screen as the Joker’s occasional partner in crime, Robbie had just as much, as not long after the film hit theaters, it was reported that the actress was spearheading a spinoff featuring Harley and a handful of female DC villains. That project is called Gotham City Sirens, and it just took one big step closer to the big screen, with David Ayer signing on to direct.