When will female directors get the same kind of breaks that male directors do? Warner Bros appears to have an answer to that, elevating Cathy Yan of comedy drama Dead Pigs to the director's role on the Margot Robbie Birds of Prey movie featuring supervillain Harley Quinn.
The Chinese-American director won Sundance's Special Jury Prize in January 2018 for her Mandarin language comedy about a herd of dead pigs floating down a river towards the bustling metropolis of Shanghai.
At the same festival, Dead Pigs picked up a nomination for the overall Grand Jury Prize, just as Colin Trevorrow's Safety Not Guaranteed had done before he was invited to steer $1.6bn dino franchise revival Jurassic World.
So there's precedent enough for bringing a relatively unknown director in to helm a high-profile franchise outing in this way.
Margot Robbie's unhinged, charismatic and deadly Harley Quinn was one of the highlights of 2016's $746m grossing Suicide Squad, prompting Warner Bros to branch out with a spin-off featuring the former psychiatric nurse and accomplice to the Joker.
Robbie will produce and reprise her role as Quinn while scriptwriter Christina Hodson, who penned December 2018 Transformers spin-off Bumblebee, is also working on the project.
Batgirl has been a mainstay in the Birds of Prey superheroine group since its formation and Hodson just so happens to be on the upcoming Batgirl movie too.
Warner Bros is yet to announce a date or a final title for the Harley Quinn project, based on DC Comics' Birds of Prey comic series which has, at times, featured characters from Suicide Squad.
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