Of course whether Robbie wants to do an HBO Max series is a different matter. The Australian actor has already netted two Oscar nominations for her work in I, Tonya and Bombshell, and has moved on to have a successful producing career with projects like the aforementioned Tonya Harding biopic as well as the 2020 Best Picture nominee, Promising Young Woman. Plus, after three stints under the clown makeup, she might want a break. Still, in a perfect world we’d get at least one more outing with her version of Harley alongside her favorite redhead.
Polka-Dot Man
If getting Margot Robbie to do an HBO Max series proves difficult, one imagines Gunn and the streaming service would then have much better luck building on top of what we already know from the life and times of David Dastmalchian’s Polka-Dot Man. This supervillain sad sack version of Norman Bates stole entire scenes with his pitiful eyes in Gunn’s The Suicide Squad and still has one of the most delightfully absurd superpowers ever conceived: He throws polka-dots at people until they die.
It’s a wild conceit that could easily be expanded on by a new series which digs into Polka-Dot Man’s bizarre relationship with his Dr. Frankenstein-like mother, as well as his siblings who didn’t survive the experiments. However, given that we all know Polka-Dot Man’s fate is to be reduced to a smear beneath Starro’s intergalactic foot, the tradeoff here is it would have to be a prequel… that we always know is building to a crushing end.
Ratcatcher 2
For the reasons listed above, we suspect the character most likely to get the HBO Max treatment will be none other than Daniela Melchior’s Ratcatcher 2. When we first talked to Gunn about The Suicide Squad before its release, the director told us that “Daniela Melchior has the charisma of just a classic [presence], like someone from the French New Wave. She’s a true movie star.” After seeing the film, it was obvious he wasn’t whistling “Folsom Prison Blues.”
Indeed, the Portuguese character Cleo Cazo was created for the movie and Melchior. While she has what at first looks like the most repellent and humble of superpowers–she can talk to rats–like Polka-Dot Man, she is more than what her dippy name suggests. Gunn’s affection for the outcasts and losers comes shining through the character, as does Melchior’s ability to convey soulful optimism via the young woman who is constantly discounted because of her age, background, and her BFF being a rat named Sebastian Well, the unlikely pair saved the day at the end of the movie, and seeing them work together in a limited series while having new bizarre subterranean adventures could be a joy. It would also pave the way for Taika Waititi to do more cameos as the first Ratcatcher and Cleo’s father.
Plus, it’d also be nice to force Gunn to step again outside the “terrible father” convention he’s used many times, including in Peacemaker.
