HARLEY QUINN producers would “love” to make an animated Harley movie

It’s been a few weeks since we got the news that Harley Quinn had been renewed for a third season. The series is moving to become an HBO Max exclusive in North America as DC Universe transitions to become a comics only subscription service.

In an extensive new interview with Deadline, show EPs Justin Halpern and Patrick Schumacker have talked a bit more about plans for season 3 and whether they would be interested in making an animated movie starring the series’ characters.

Speaking of when fans might see season 3, Patrick was asked if the show will return in 2021, “That would be, I think, an optimistic guess,” he said.

“I don’t know if they’ve announced the episode order number yet, but let’s just say, we’re not doing two seasons back to back, like we did. That may give us some relief, in the sense that there’s not as big of a production load. So, I would say optimistically, we’re looking at probably the end of 2021.”

That tallies with what we’ve been hearing which is that the show hasn’t been renewed for long and that work hasn’t yet begun on officially writing the new season.

Speaking of the move to HBO Max, Schumacker reveals it wasn’t a conversation of if it would happen and more a conversation of when.

“We were thrilled to hear [about the move]. I mean, it’s a conversation that’s been months long. It was a matter of when, not if, for a very, very long time. We kept hearing that week in and week out, and then obviously there were some organizational changes at HBO Max that I think slowed things down a little bit, perhaps. But at the end of the day, we got what we want, and we’re thrilled.”

“In terms of HBO Max, in the cursory conversations that we’ve had with some of the executives there, who we’re just kind of friends with, they’re all very excited. We haven’t even had our official kickoff call that you usually have before a season, with all the development and current executives. I think we’ll get to hear directly from them in a professional capacity next week, but my hope is that fundamentally, the show will remain exactly as it was on DC Universe. And I don’t think there’s any reason that it couldn’t, aside from DC Universe not really having the Broadcast Standards and Practices at all. [Laughs] It was so infrequently that we got any notes on any use of violence or language, or anything like that. It might be a little different on HBO Max, but I kind of doubt it.”

Finally, and this one is sure to excite fans, the duo were asked about their thoughts on creating an animated movie using their version of Harley. Surprisingly, it seems the idea is something which they have discussed before!

“Yeah, we would love that.” said Schumacker. “When we were waiting for a Season 3 pickup, we were kicking around ideas with the executives over at Warner Bros. Animation about that sort of thing, because we were like, “Well, we have stories to tell with these characters. We want to continue going with it, and if Season 3 can’t happen, maybe we can do something in the feature space, which is sort of independent of a network picking up the show or not.” So, that is something that has been on our [minds]. Right now, we’re not planning on it, but it is absolutely something that we would be interested very much in doing down the road.”

Harley Quinn stars Kaley Cuoco as the voice of Harley, and she’ll be joined by Lake Bell, Alan Tudyk, Ron Funches, JB Smoove, Jason Alexander, Wanda Sykes, Giancarlo Esposito, Natalie Morales, Jim Rash, Diedrich Bader, Tony Hale and Chris Meloni.

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