As such, Jared Leto and Margot Robbie are set to return as Batman enemies Joker and Harley Quinn, reprising their roles from David Ayer’s Suicide Squad. At the helm for this project is the duo of Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, filmmakers behind NBC show This is Us and the 2011 film Crazy, Stupid Love. According to THR, this movie will come after the already-planned Suicide Squad sequel, which has been struggling to lock in a director as of late. As opposed to the Scorsese “hard-boiled” crime movie, Ficarra and Requa envision this film as an “insane and twisted love story,” with one insider describing it as “When Harry Met Sally on benzedrine.”
THR adds that this Joker/Harley Quinn movie is further along in development than the aforementioned Scorsese project. With these two projects being worked on in parallel, Warner Bros. is committing to creating two separate lines of movies based on DC properties. It’s always interesting when two competing studios have similar movies releasing near each other—i.e. White House Down and Olympus Has Fallen, or Andy Serkis’s forthcoming Jungle Book movie against Disney’s own live-action adaptation. But there isn’t much precedent for a studio to release two completely different movies about the same character.
The next installment in the DC Extended Universe is Justice League, releasing Nov. 17.
