"Birds of Prey" and "Wonder Woman 1984" at CCXP 2019
The excitement from fans filled São Paulo at the 2019 Comic-Con Experience (CCXP) this past weekend. The event featured interviews and trailer reveals from Warner Bros.' upcoming movies "Birds of Prey (And The Emancipation of Harley Quinn)" and "Wonder Woman 1984."
The first night of CCXP welcomed the Birds of Prey cast, Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, Mary Elisabeth Winstead as Huntress, Ella Jay Basco as Cassandra Cain, Rosie Perez as Renee Montoya and Jurnee Smollet-Bell as Black Canary, along with director Cathy Yan.
Fans at CCXP got a glimpse of a scene from "Birds of Prey (And The Emancipation of Harley Quinn)" while fans all over the world got to see seven new character posters online.
The cast sat down for a live interview at CCXP to talk about the upcoming movie and their roles as the "birds" characters.
In this latest installment of some of DC's comic book characters, we get a to dive deeper into the lives and minds of characters like Harley Quinn.
"She's so fun to play," said Robbie. "In this film, you get to see a different side of her. You spend a lot more time with her and you get to see things like…what does Harley's apartment look like? What would Harley eat if she was hungover, and how does Harley deal with the breakup? Not well, is the answer," said Robbie.
"But it was fun to just find those more intimate moments and seeing her a little more exposed and vulnerable because, of course, in a situation like that she's going to act out even more than usual. So, of course, chaos ensues in the film."
According to Smollett-Bell, playing the role of Dinah Lance, a.k.a. the Black Canary had its challenges.
"Stepping into Diana Lance was a really happy challenge for me because this role forced me to do so many things I've never done before like, on film at least, sing," said Smollett-Bell.
"I fell in love with Diana after having read the comic. She's all compassion and heart. And even though she's this vicious ferocious street fighter, she still has this moral compass," she said.
"There were things about that that we really wanted to bring into this movie because our Dinah is not yet the powerful Black Canary that we know her to be," said Smollett-Bell. "She's at the point in her life in which she's working for Roman and his black mass club, and she's very much so shut off from the world. She wants nothing to do with cleaning up Gotham and she doesn't really care about anyone because Gotham took her mother away from her."
Smollett-Bell went on to say that, "it's interesting to explore, you know, this idea of a woman who is so powerful and capable of such great power and yet she chooses not to use her power, which was something I know I could very much so relate to."
When asked about directing this movie, Yan shared how much she loved all the characters. "It was wonderful to work with these wonderful women and develop these characters more and also ground them in our Gotham and make them feel relatable to the modern women," said Yan.
But to describe Renne Montoya in one word, Perez responds, "Tenacious."
Winstead then goes on to describe her character as the Huntress. "She's quite a ruthless killer," said Winstead.
"Most of the other characters have a life outside of whatever their skill set is, and Huntress really doesn't. That is her life - her physicality, her fighting, that's who she is and it's totally connected to her emotionally and in every other way," said Winstead.
“So I think in that sense, she brought a lot to the team like this girl is not going to let anything get in her way, she doesn't really care about that much other than…killing. So all these other girls are like great, yeah, do that," laughs Winstead.
The youngest of the lot, Basco steps into the shoes of Cassandra Cain in her first big feature film.
“When first reading the comics and the script, I really wanted to figure out who Cas was, and her origin story, and how she's independent but misguided 'cause she's still a child,” said Basco. “So that was really fun to play. It's honestly such an honor to play Cassandra Cain."
Catch "Birds of Prey (And The Emancipation of Harley Quinn)" in theaters February 7, 2020.
Raise your gauntlets for the new "Wonder Woman 1984" trailer and character posters from the much-anticipated sequel, "Wonder Woman."
Fans all over the world joined the live Twitter stream for the release of the film's trailer debut and new character posters. The trailer and posters provide a glimpse at the movie's core characters, including Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman, Kristen Wiig as Barbara Anne Minerva, The Mandalorian's Pedro Pascal as Max Lord and the return of Chris Pine as Steve Trevor.
Director Patty Jenkins told the audience how excited she was about this upcoming sequel. "We're so excited for our wonderful Wonder Woman to get unleashed on the modern world where she takes on some of her greatest foes and she tries to save them and everyone in an epic battle," said Jenkins.
Joining her at CCXP is producer and star of "Wonder Woman 1984,” Wonder Woman herself, Gal Gadot, who explained a little of what we can expect for the next movie. "In the first movie, we got to establish the story of Diana becoming Wonder Woman. In this movie we’re going to find Diana in 1984, she's quite lonely, lost all of her friends over the years and she's doing what she needs to do. She's doing her calling – she’s helping mankind and saving them until something crazy is about to happen to her."
Fans asked Jenkins if it was a challenge to connect the two movies together over the 40-year time span. "It wasn't a challenge to connect them," said Jenkins. "The first movie was its own story, and this is very much its own story. And it tells a perfect progression of Diana even though it's in such a different period of time."
Setting the timeline in the 80's, according to Jenkins was a perfect time to bring Diana into the modern world. "[The 80's] is sort of the height of Western civilization and the success of the world that we all live in in the aftermath of now," said Jenkins. "So I was curious to collide our Wonder Woman into the height of our current modern belief system and what kind of villains come out of that and see what happens. So it all came quite naturally."
But the biggest question of all is, how is Steve Trevor even alive?
"I can’t tell you…but here's what I will say, we didn't put Steve Trevor in this movie because we just wanted to put Steve Trevor in this movie," said Jenkins at CCXP. "When we thought of the story for this film while we were making the first film, a eureka moment came and it couldn't have been told without Chris Pine playing Steve Trevor. So I promise you, it's not a gimmick, it's integral to the story, it's incredibly important that we had him and we just super enjoyed it. It was great having Chris back, but it is also important to the story."
New additions to the cast include Wiig as Barbara Anne Minerva and Pascal as Max Lord.
"We were super fans of Kristen and we love how funny she is, but also I've been a huge admirer of what a great actress she is for a long time," said Jenkins in reference to adding Wiig into the cast. "So when we needed someone to go all the way from one end of the spectrum of being funny, sweet Diana's friend, all the way to a totally different place, we knew that Kristen Wiig would kill it. And she went beyond our wildest dreams."
Gadot chimed in with her experience working with Wiig and the other cast members, saying how much fun she had on set.
"Kristen and I have a band…we sing, we dance and we do funny things," laughed Gadot. “So as much as the movie was demanding and complicated and hard to shoot, it was so full with joy and we had an amazing time throughout."
Shot in 4 locations in 3 countries, much of the movie is captured in live-action versus a CGI, as Jenkins and Gadot revealed at CCXP, making the movie an 8-month long challenge for the two mothers balancing work and personal life, as they revealed at the Facebook live Q&A session.
"This is the biggest movie I have ever done in my entire career," said Gadot. "The scale is huge, the movie is epic. We've been all around the world. Instead of shooting some action and letting the CGI take over most of it, we actually shot most of it, which was super cool to watch but freaking not easy to do. Thank God I had some help with my stunt team."
Jenkin then continues on with an example of Wiig's character doing stunts. "There's incredible wire rigs and incredible prosthetics but Kristen Wiig's character, Barbara Minerva, gets to a place where you…where you end up going a little further and so it’s got a little help but it is very real," said Jenkins.
When asked what it was like working with Pascall, the other new cast addition, Jenkin explains, "Max Lord is a character very much of the time period the movie is in," said Jenkins. "He's the king of infomercials ad he's selling a dream to the public and he'll do anything to be successful. But sometimes when you get what you want, greatness comes with a price."
In the closing of the "Wonder Woman 1984" at CCXP, Gadot emphasized that this movie is for everyone.
"You are the reason why we're making these types of movies,” said Gadot. "I don't think it's just women and girls, I think the movie is universal and for everyone."
"Everyone can be Wonder Woman," agreed Jenkins.