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Margot Robbie joins Colin Farrell in A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, a romantic fantasy drama directed by Kogonada. It marks their first collaboration on a feature film, but they could have crossed paths years ago as Harley Quinn and the Penguin in the DC studios' action tentpole Birds of Prey.
At the time, Robbie headlined the DC film, alongside a female-led cast of Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Jurnee Smollett, Rosie Perez, and Ella Jay Basco. The movie showed them fighting against Black Mask, a supervillain played by Ewan McGregor. Yet, in another world, they might have faced another ruthless crime lord from Gotham, played by Farrell.
In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, the Barbie star revealed that an earlier draft of the script included Farrell's Penguin as the main villain.
"The first draft that Christina [Hodson] wrote of Birds of Prey, the villain was the Penguin," Robbie told Farrell.
She continued,
"And then Matt Reeves said, 'Don't use the Penguin. I'm going to use him in my thing.' And so we swapped it to Black Mask."
Why did the Penguin not appear in Birds of Prey?
Birds of Prey, directed by Cathy Yan, was released in 2020, two years before writer-director Matt Reeves brought Robert Pattinson's The Batman to the big screens.
According to Margot Robbie's comments, Yan's film could have included Colin Farrell's the Penguin as a central villain against its female-led gang of rebellious misfits. Instead, he was introduced in Reeves' 2022 film and brought back with his HBO Max series. That's why the Penguin did not appear before Birds of Prey.
Robbie's comments do not reveal the exact reason behind Reeves' decision, but it seems like he wanted to establish the vengeful crime lord in his neo-noir world instead of writing him into a pre-existing lore.
If the Penguin was introduced in the 2000 film, it might have set up certain expectations about him. It could have also revealed some details about the character that Reeves might have wanted to keep a mystery, so that it can be slowly unpeeled in his own project/s. That's likely why the Penguin didn't appear before The Batman.
Despite those changes, Colin Farrell's Penguin and Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn are some of the strongest characters introduced in DC's cinematic renditions.
Robbie's rebellious arc as Quinn began with 2016's Suicide Squad, which she continued with 2020's Birds of Prey, and 2021's The Suicide Squad. Farrell, on the other hand, entered the universe with Reeves' 2022 film and returned with HBO's 2024 series. While Robbie's return as Quinn remains uncertain, Farrell is expected to reprise his role in The Batman: Part II.
What else is Margot Robbie working on?
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Margot Robbie will co-star with Colin Farrell in A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, a fantasy romance. She plays a single woman who goes on a life-changing adventure with a man (Farrell) she bumps into at a wedding. The film is directed by Kogonada (Columbus, After Yang) and written by Seth Reiss (The Menu, The Regime).
Other than that, Robbie will also star in Emerald Fennell's (Promising Young Woman, Saltburn) adaptation of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, alongside Jacob Elordi, Shazad Latif, Hong Chau, Alison Oliver, and Owen Cooper. The film is scheduled for a February 2026 release by Warner Bros. Pictures.
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