Harley Quinn: The Fantabulous Birds of Prey POSTMORTEM by Midnight's Edge
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzJzwzRo4IM
“Birds of Prey and The Fantabulous Emancipation of one Harley Quinn” under performed so badly that even following its release, the title was changed to emphasize that despite the title, it’s really a Harley Quinn solo movie with some guest stars.share
In this postmortem, @AndreEinherjar will explore how it could end up performing this poorly, and what effect that will have upon both the future of DC on film, and the industry as a whole.
https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-new-Harley-Quinn-film-bombing-at-the-box-office/answer/Anthony-R-Cockrell
It’s a sequel to a movie that received mostly negative reviews from critics and fans alike.
Few people know what “Birds of Prey” is. It does not have very much brand/name recognition.
They have just re-released (or re-titled) the film as Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey, in hopes that people will see the Harley Quinn name and actually go see it. Seeing as how Margot Robbie’s rendition of Harley Quinn was one of the only things that was universally praised about the first film.
They intentionally toned down the skimpy outfits and over sexualization of the main character, Harley Quinn in favor of a strong feministic vibe. They decided not to feature Margot Robbie in her popular tight and skimpy hot pants and top that she wore in the first film. It’s sad to say, but that may have been their biggest selling point. Harley Quinn was the #1 Halloween costume following the first film and became the #1 search term associated with “adult” web searches and websites for a while as well.
It is essentially an all female-led cast and historically that doesn’t do anything for box office numbers. Films like Captain marvel, Wonder Woman are exceptions, as those films already had built up a huge recognition and fan base.
https://forum.dvdtalk.com/movie-talk/649759-birds-prey-fantabulous-emancipation-one-harley-quinn-yan-2020-%97-reviews-thread-2.html#post13685715
1. The trailers: The initial trailer for this was pretty bad and did not really do a good job on selling you what the movie was about. Even the second trailer did not really sell you on what it was about, or even why to go see it.
2. Losing the comic fans: The movie did a lot to go and change the look and myth of the characters in it and in the process lost the comic book fans. Comic book fans want to see adaptations of the characters they read, and yet again this was basically another example of a studio seemingly being embarrassed to embrace the costumes and the origins of the characters. Why is Cassandra Cain a juvenile? Why is Black Mask only wearing the mask once and acting like a goofy gay comic relief character? Why do we not get Huntress or Black Canary in something similar to their comic book costumes?
3. The rating: Unlike Deadpool, who's fanbase was primarily older males, Harley has a big contingent of fans who are teen and preteen girls. Making this an R-rated movie (which it had no reason to be in the first place) essentially kept all of them out and limited the fan base for a movie which really did not need to be R. It's hard to make movies about certain characters and make them have PG-13 ratings (Joker, Punisher, Blade) but Harley is not one of those characters.