‘Black Canary’ Is Still In The Works At HBO Max

Despite some recent tumult at HBO Max and Warner Bros. Discovery as a whole, it seems that Black Canary is still going strong. The film is a spinoff of Harley Quinn: Birds Of Prey, starring Jurnee Smollett. News of the project leaked back in August of 2021, but we haven’t heard much about it since. A lot of fans became increasingly worried about the project’s future given other changes at HBO Max,  but luckily, Black Canary has managed to avoid meeting the same fate as Batgirl.

Dinah Lance, the current incarnation of Black Canary, has appeared in a number of multi-media projects over the years. Her first appearance in film or TV was during a short-lived Birds of Prey series back in 2002. The show featured footage of Michael Keaton’s Batman and Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman, anchoring it firmly in Tim Burton’s Batman franchise. She’d also go on to show up in Smallville and Arrow.

The most recent variation we see on Black Canary, the one portrayed by Jurnee Smollett, is a singer at a club owned by Black Mask. Her mother is the original Black Canary, and it seems that she’s passed that mantle down to her daughter. Black Canary has the ability to emit hypersonic screams; in most incarnations of the character, she’s also an expert hand-to-hand combatant. She’s hesitant to become a hero at first, but she quickly realizes it’s what she’s meant to do.

So Black Canary is still due for release sometime within the next few years. After the merger between Warner Bros. and Discovery, it was difficult to think anything in the pipeline was certain. If a nearly-completed Batgirl could be done away with so easily, any other film in the middle of production could have been on the chopping block. But according to a Warner Bros. rep (via TVLine), the movie is safe.