Birds of Prey star Margot Robbie has revealed that Ewan McGregor’s Black Mask was not the original choice for the DC Extended Universe movie’s main villain.
What did Margot Robbie say about The Penguin being in the first draft of Birds of Prey?
While speaking with Entertainment Weekly to promote her latest movie, the fantasy romance A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, with co-lead Colin Farrell, Robbie realized that both of them had played Batman villains, her as Harley Quinn for the DCEU and him as Penguin in Matt Reeves’ The Batman Epic Crime Saga. Both actors were surprised to have never once discussed their involvement in the DC sandbox, with Robbie noting, “That’s so weird.”
The Harley Quinn actor then revealed that the DCEU’s Penguin was almost introduced in Birds of Prey, sharing, “The first draft that Christina [Hodson] wrote of Birds of Prey, the villain was the Penguin,” to which Farrell, visibly shocked, responded, “No way! Really?”
Robbie went on to explain that it was actually Farrell’s Penguin that forced Hodson to replace the Batman villain with another. “And then [The Batman writer-director] 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.”
After being pressed for more details by Farrell about Hodson’s Penguin, Robbie said that it was “amazing” and that she would email a copy of the original Birds of Prey draft to her co-star for him to read at his own leisure.
While the Penguin never ended up appearing in the DCEU, Farrell’s take on the Batman villain in Reeves’ 2022 movie received critical acclaim, leading to the character headlining his own HBO limited series in 2024. While a second season of The Penguin has been teased by DC and HBO, Farrell’s next appearance as the Gotham City crime boss will be in Reeves’ long-awaited sequel, The Batman Part II, which is scheduled to hit theaters in 2027.
As for A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, the Kogonada-directed romantic fantasy film opens in theaters on September 19, 2025.
(Source: Entertainment Weekly)
Originally reported by Lee Freitag on SuperHeroHype.
