Everything You Need To Know About Batman And Harley Quinn

Coming soon to a theater near you is DC Entertainment's wacky and wild buddy-cop caper Batman and Harley Quinn! Before it arrives in homes, the animated movie starring the caped crusader and Gotham's most lovable crackpot will screen as a part of a one-night-only Fathom event. And during Comic-Con International in San Diego, CBR sat down with its cast of creators to get the scoop on Batman and Harley Quinn.

Batman: The Animated Series co-creator Bruce Timm conceived the project, which has the titular twosome teaming-up to take down a villain, one whom Harley is particularly close to. "It's a little bit of a pinch from an old Batman: The Animated Series episode called 'Harlequinade,' where Batman had to team up with Harley to kidnap the Joker," he told us in a roundtable interview. However, it's not the Joker that Bats and Harley are chasing down, but rather her gal pal Poison Ivy, who's masterminding a plan to save the planet by wiping out all mankind.

"I don't consider Poison Ivy evil," Paget Brewster mused about the overzealous environmentalist she voices here. "I understand she wants to destroy all humans. But! She has a point!..She just believes in her mission that humans have destroyed the earth. And let's face it, to some extent we have. I mean, we're the most damaging species on the planet. So I understand Poison Ivy wanting to stop that--in her mind--reign of terror."

To accomplish this, Poison Ivy teams up with a lesser-known DC baddie, the Floronic Man. Haven't heard of him? Neither had screenwriter James Krieg, who confessed he went to DC Wiki to familiarize himself with the character that Timm had pitched to be Poison Ivy's partner in apocalypse.

Kevin Michael Richards, who voices the brawny green giant, gaves us a rundown about the Floronic Man. "He's a plant-based behemoth of a creature" who is "very eloquent," but very dangerous. "He's killing dudes left and right in this one," Richards revealed, "(But he's) very intelligent, which I believe makes him more deadly."

"They really want to wipe out all life on earth besides plant life," he explained. "They just want to keep everything green."

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"But Harley Quinn doesn’t want to die!" Brewster said, revealing the incredible circumstance that would pull sworn enemies together. "I mean, talk about a survivor. That is not going to happen. So she has to go against her best friend to stop this eco-weapon from being used to return Earth to an Eden."

Of course in some incarnations, Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn are more than friends, they're lovers. What will they be in Batman and Harley Quinn? That's in the eye of the beholder, Brewster told us, saying "It's up the audience to see and hear what they see and hear and believe what they believe, and no one's wrong."

"Are they a couple? Are they not a couple? Is there a history?" She mused, "That's up to each individual fan. I think there are hints that there's a possibility, but there's nothing concrete either way. I love that without defining it, they love each other and are friends. And now they have to go head to head against each other, because they are on opposite sides of this mission."

Brewster also revealed that Harley starts Batman and Harley Quinn in a pretty surprising place: on the straight and narrow. "She's separated from Joker. She's not acting crazy. I'm not saying she's on meds," Brewster said, "But like, 'I'm going to wait tables and get it together.' And Batman comes to enlist her to go up against Poison Ivy and Floronic Man."

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Remaining Faithful to Batman: The Animated Series

From there, things become "our version of a buddy-cop movie," Timm said, "Where Batman is the cranky old cop and she's the young crazy cop." But while they're having fun with characters and the look of the '90s animated series, both creators and cast were careful to stay reverent to that source material.

"I think the most challenging part of this project is that Batman: The Animated Series is kind of a holy of holies in our community," Kreig said, "I think we didn't want to be disrespectful of it because it's important to a lot of people, but we were writing a comedy set in that world. So I think the challenge was to not be offensive to the original audience, but still make a funny movie."

"Going to that humor and keeping him rooted in the character you've known for 25 years, that was the challenge for me," Conroy said of the movie. "I was just the straight man for this. Now, this is not as heavy as The Killing Joke. That's as dark as it gets! You can't play that level of drama in this movie, or else you'll kill the movie. Everyone would be crying when they should be laughing. So you're playing the reality of the moment, the darkness of the character, but in a slightly lighter situation. "

"It's just a weird romp," Timm said, "It's just an excuse to go back to the BTAS world and do something fun with Batman and Harley, and the classic style. It was nothing more than I wanted to have fun making a movie that was off-kilter and weird with very little angst and super-huge world-shattering consequences. It's just fun. That's all I wanted to do. I just wanted to have fun."

Batman and Harley Quinn helmer Sam Lui emphasized the large role Timm has had in the film's creation, telling us, "This is Bruce's baby. He was the co-creator of it. It's his idea. He had a very specific vision of what it was. A lot of it was me catching up with what do you want? What are you looking for?"

Perhaps in some regard, Timm was looking to reclaim Harley Quinn, a character he had a hand in creating who has gone on to take on a bunch of bonkers yet beloved forms. "It's nothing but exciting and gratifying to see how popular she (Harley) has become," Timm said, "We certainly never expected it. But yeah, she's immensely popular. If I'm really honest with myself, a lot of her exploding popularity happened after the video games. So, I'm all for 57 different varieties of Harley Quinns out there. But at the same time if I was going to do a Harley Quinn movie, the BTAS world and the classic Harley costume is the one I'm most comfortable with. So it's the one I chose to go with."

"I love her," Timm said of Harley. "She's like my daughter, who doesn't listen to me. She's a fun character. I'm proud and embarrassed by her, because she's naughty. She doesn't do the right thing all the time. But she's very very popular and she's very fun. And she's fun to hang out with."

Directed by Sam Liu (Batman: The Killing Joke), Batman and Harley Quinn stars Kevin Conroy and Loren Lester, reprising their Batman: The Animated Series roles as Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson, joined by Melissa Rauch (The Big Bang Theory) as Harley Quinn, Paget Brewster (Criminal Minds) as Poison Ivy and Kevin Michael Richardson (The Cleveland Show) as the Floronic Man.

The animated film will play in theaters on August 14 only, as part of Fathom Events. It is available August 15 on Digital HD, and arrives August 29 on Blu-ray and DVD.