Among 2017’s impressive line-up of big budget live action superhero blockbusters, this summer will also see the return of the fan-favorite DC Animated Universe that started with Bruce Timm’s Batman: The Animated Series.
According to Empire, Batman and Harley Quinn is Warner Bros. Animation’s next straight-to-video animated film to star the Caped Crusader and other Gotham City heroes and villains. Executive produced by Timm, the film will feature an unlikely of team-up of Batman, former boy wonder Nightwing, and Harley Quinn as they to try stop a global disaster caused by Poison Ivy and the Plant-Master.
Original series voices Kevin Conroy and Loren Lester return to voice Batman and Nightwing, but filling in for the part of Harley Quinn from the original’s Arleen Sorkin is The Big Bang Theory’s own Melissa Rauch. Rauch plays the spunky squeaky-voiced Dr. Bernadette Rostenkowsi-Wolowitz on the popular, long-running CBS sitcom. Quinn was famously recently essayed by Margot Robbie in last summer’s live-action blockbuster Suicide Squad and looks primed to play the character again in the upcoming female-slanted Gotham City Sirens.
Rauch told Empire, “I love that Harley is a badass and, beyond that, that she uses her humor as another weapon in her arsenal. She knows just how to diffuse a situation with her humor, and how to incite a situation with her sarcasm. It’s a dream role.”
On capturing the voice performance, Rauch also commented, “I knew Harley had a higher pitched tone, and a bit of a New York accent and I come from a New Jersey family where everyone could be former gun molls. So I wanted to give a nod to my background without being as shrill. In all honesty, I used to speak exactly like that — my acting school professors really worked the accent out of me. So it was fun to find those tones and accent again.”
Paget Brewster (Criminal Minds, Community) will voice Harley’s one-time friend and fellow villainess Poison Ivy, who was voiced in the original series by Diane Pershing. Brewster had previously worked on DC Animated films as Lana Lang in Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Lois Lane in Justice League: Gods And Monsters. The film will also include voice acting giants John DiMaggio (Futurama, Adventure Time), Rob Paulsen (Animaniacs, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), and Mindy Sterling (Austin Powers, The Legend of Korra).
No word yet on whether or not the film will receive a limited theatrical release like 2016’s The Killing Joke, but Batman And Harley Quinn will be available this Summer through digital download, Blu-ray and DVD.
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