Yeesh, you take a few days out of the usual work loop to focus all your attention on Batman: The Animated Series (keep your eyes peeled for our next issue ?) and Warner Brothers’ Birds of Prey pictures goes and casts two of its key players!

Courtesy of Deadline, Mary Elizabeth Winstead is to play Huntress and Jurnee Smollett-Bell is playing Black Canary. Both names were amongst several contenders linked to these respective roles early last week, and now we’ve got confirmation on who’ll be playing two of the Birds of Prey’s team.

Winstead is likely best known to genre fans for efforts such as Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Fargo, and 10 Cloverfield Lane, while Smollett-Bell is a favourite of many for her roles in Eve’s Bayou, Fright Night Lights, True Blood, and Underground.

In terms of these characters, Huntress began her comic book life as Helena Wayne – the daughter of Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle – but the version seen in Birds of Prey will be the Helena Bertinelli incarnation of the character who is the vigilante daughter of a mob boss. As for Black Canary, it’s yet to be revealed whether it will be Dinah Drake or Dinah Laurel Lance as the real-life identity of this heroine. Powers-wise, both Canary characters have the famed Canary Cry that deafens and destroys.

Huntress and Black Canary will be joined by Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn and the to-be-cast Renee Montoya and Cassandra Cain in Birds of Prey, with Roman Sionis, aka Black Mask, as the villain of the piece.

To be directed by Cathy Yan, Birds of Prey is booked in for a February 2020 release.