What's Going On With David Ayer And The Gotham City Sirens Project

Harley Quinn Poison Ivy and Catwoman as the Gotham City Sirens

After directing the commercially successful Suicide Squad, David Ayer decided not to return to helm the upcoming sequel. Instead, he's turned his attention to Gotham City Sirens, the spinoff which will see Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn teaming up with Catwoman and Poison Ivy. Since Gotham City Sirens was announced late last year, there have been differing reports about much of a priority the project is for the DC Extended Universe, and recently it's been rumored that Ayer is no longer attached to it. But thanks to a sly response from Ayer on social media, it appears that such claims are inaccurate.

This all started last week during at San Diego Comic-Con at the panel for David Ayer's upcoming Netflix movie Bright. At one point, Ayer said that Bright "ain't no bullshit PG-13 studio movie," and that the streaming service didn't interfere with his creative process. Since Suicide Squad is the only PG-13 movie Ayer has directed, this kicked off speculation about if his comment was directed at Warner Bros and if this meant things haven't been progressing well on Gotham City Sirens. A couple days later, Warner Bros presented its updated DCEU slate, and Gotham City Sirens was not listed. Then yesterday in its report about how Zack and Deborah Snyder will supposedly have less creative input on the DCEU moving forward, Mashable mentioned that Ayer isn't expected to stay on Gotham City Sirens, though the director's representative refuted this, saying that Ayer is still working on the script.

Which brings us to David Ayer's tweet from late last night, which was a simple image of the comic book Harley Quinn doing her best impression of Jack Nicholson in The Shining.

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David Ayer has previously teased Gotham City Sirens on his Twitter page through images without any accompanying words, and since the above tweet followed hours after Mashable's report, it would seem that this is his way of letting folks know that he remains attached to Gotham City Sirens without actually saying so. Obviously we can't say this with 100% certainty, but given his reasoning for wanting to direct Gotham City Sirens rather than Suicide Squad 2, it sounds like this movie means a lot to him. All this is still subject to change, but for now, it appears that Ayer's fans can look forward to him overseeing the adventure of Gotham City's notorious lady trio.

For now, no plot details for Gotham City Sirens have been released, though David Ayer posted a picture of Batman rogue Black Mask last February, possibly indicating that he will be the main antagonist. Keep checking back with CinemaBlend for more news on how the project is coming along.

Adam Holmes
Senior Content Producer

Connoisseur of Marvel, DC, Star Wars, John Wick, MonsterVerse and Doctor Who lore, Adam is a Senior Content Producer at CinemaBlend. He started working for the site back in late 2014 writing exclusively comic book movie and TV-related articles, and along with branching out into other genres, he also made the jump to editing. Along with his writing and editing duties, as well as interviewing creative talent from time to time, he also oversees the assignment of movie-related features. He graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in Journalism, and he’s been sourced numerous times on Wikipedia. He's aware he looks like Harry Potter and Clark Kent.