DC's Birds of Prey movie has cast Ewan McGregor to play the villain Black Mask. It was previously reported that Warner Bros. and DC had their eye on either McGregor or District 9's Sharlto Copley to portray the film's big bad - a character who, at the time, was heavily rumored to be Gotham City mob boss Roman Sionis (aka. Black Mask).
Birds of Prey itself has started to come together at a steady pace over the past few months, now that production is gearing up to begin in early 2019 (in order to make its scheduled February 2020 release date). Margot Robbie is reprising her Suicide Squad role as Harley Quinn in the film and will share the screen alongside a team of super-antiheroes that includes Mary Elizabeth Winstead (10 Cloverfield Lane) as mafia heiress-turned-vigilante Huntress and Jurnee Smollett-Bell (Underground) as rough n' tumble street fighter Black Canary.
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According to The Wrap, McGregor is currently in final talks to play Black Mask in Birds of Prey (with additional outlets having since confirmed the news). He joins a cast that further includes Rosie Perez (The Counselor) as the Gotham Detective Renee Montoya. It's also been rumored that Peyton Elizabeth Lee (Andi Mack) is circling the role of a young Cassandra Cain, who goes on to become one of the versions of Batgirl in the DC comics.
Introduced in the Batman comics in 1985, Black Mask is a vicious kingpin with (as his name implies) a deranged fixation with masks. The character's sadistic nature and predilection for torturing his enemies (and victims) makes him a proper tonal match for Birds of Prey, which is described as being a grittier and R-rated DC crime drama that features equally dark crime fighters like Harley Quinn and Huntress as its heroes. A previously-reported Birds of Prey plot breakdown indicated that Black Mask poses enough of a threat in the movie for Detective Montoya to ally herself with Harley and her vigilante pals, in an effort to take him down.
McGregor himself is certainly a welcome addition to the Birds of Prey cast and should bring the necessary mix of charisma and menace needed to make the film's version of Black Mask a compelling and memorable villain. By signing on for the project, McGregor is not only staying in business with Warner Bros. (which is also distributing Mike Flanagan's Doctor Sleep adaptation, starring the actor) but also reuniting with Winstead, after the pair shared the screen during the third season of FX and Noah Hawley's Fargo TV series.
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Source: The Wrap
