In between passing his time by finishing his long-awaited script for Mallrats 2, Kevin Smith is also winning at self-quarantining because he revisited Warner Bros’ kickass Birds of Prey last night when it made its way onto digital early. The Jay and Silent Bob Reboot filmmaker paid this awesome compliment to Birds of Prey’s Cathy Yan as he reached the final act:
The Roman Sionis fanbase is strong. Although Birds of Prey is clearly all about the badass girl gang made up of Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn, Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s Huntress, Jurnee Smollett-Bell’s Black Canary and Rosie Perez’s Renee Montoya, wow, does Ewan McGregor steal the show with his eccentric villain. As Kevin Smith wrote on Twitter, Roman’s lines are just incredible.
The Clerks writer/director had a lot of nice things to say about Birds of Prey while watching it at home, and Cathy Yan took notice. Here’s what the Birds of Prey filmmaker said in response to Kevin Smith’s words:
She’s clearly flattered. Birds of Prey is Cathy Yan’s first major film after impressing with her 2018 feature debut, Dead Pigs, at Sundance. The movie may not have raked in as much cash as other films under the DC Comics umbrella, but it still managed to bring in $199 million worldwide against a $84 million production budget. It’s one of those rare releases that had audiences and critics agreeing, considering the movie has a 78% score on Rotten Tomatoes for both its critic and audience meter.
Birds of Prey’s time in theaters was cut short due to movie theaters shutting down last week due to COVID-19 concerns. The latest DC flick was on big screens for just under two months before Warner Bros decided to release it onto digital early. When Universal became the first studio to announce early digital dates for their recent movies such as The Invisible Man, The Hunt and Trolls, Cathy Yan took to Twitter to share her interest in Birds of Prey coming early as well… and thus, it happened.
It sounds like Kevin Smith was happy to return to the movie early. The filmmaker is such a huge fan of DC Comics that he actually named his one and only child Harley Quinn. So the fact that he’d approve a movie starring her that much is high praise for Cathy Yan.
Birds of Prey is certainly packed with memorable scenes for fans to jump on early and watch again, such as the viral hair tie sequence that Cathy Yan recently called a “big middle finger” to the expectations for female comic book characters to fit into a specific standard. And every one of Ewan McGregor’s f-bombs is gold. Birds of Prey can be purchased on digital now.
