2016’s Suicide Squad was a muddled mess, for many (cough Jared Leto cough) reasons, but everyone can agree there was one redeemable thing about the film: Margot Robbie’s performance as Harley Quinn. The Oscar-nominated actress will reprise the role in director Cathy Yan’s Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn). That’s quite the tongue-twister, which explains why the spin-off had a simpler working title, one with a connection to another filmmaker Robbie has worked with: Quentin Tarantino.
“In Pulp Fiction, when Uma [Thurman] and John Travolta are having their $5 milkshake, she’s explaining the pilot that she – which I think, in real life, Uma had done. I think that dialogue was based on the fact that she’d done a pilot like that. And then he turned it into dialogue, and then she talks about Fox Force Five. And it’s like a whole scene,” the I, Tonya actress told MTV News. “But in our movie, there’s five prominent women. And like, we always throw a reference to Tarantino moments that we pray to inject into the film. So, it felt fitting.”
Robbie even asked permission from Tarantino to use Fox Force Five as the working title, and “he thought it was really funny,” she added. It was either that, or Zed’s Dead, Baby, Zed’s Dead. As for why Birds of Prey (out February 2020) has such a complex title, Robbie explained that because “it’s not a very serious movie… we thought the title should reflect that. Birds of Prey makes it sound really serious and that’s like Harley adding her, don’t worry, I’m in this, too.”
Watch the Fox Force Five scene below.
