Christina Hodson Takes Over for Joss Whedon as Batgirl Movie Scribe
Warner Bros. is making good on its commitment to diversify its slate of DC Entertainment movies by quickly moving ahead with its plans to make a standalone live-action Batgirl movie less than two months after Avengers director Joss Whedon bowed out as writer and director. Whedon said he “couldn’t crack the code” of what a Batgirl movie should be, but the studio thinks Unforgettable scribe Christina Hodson can. According to THR, Hodson has been hired to write a whole new story about Barbara Gordon, the daughter of Gotham City Commissioner Gordon, who takes up the mantle of the Bat when her father forbids her to go into law enforcement.
Hodson is something of a hot commodity right now. She has made the Black List of top unproduced screenplays three times, wrote the Transformers spin-off Bumblebee for Paramount and even has some experience in the DC world as the writer of a Suicide Squad spin-off featuring Harley Quinn titled Birds of Prey, among other projects.
Warner Bros. is broadening its approach to DC Entertainment properties in the wake of Justice League‘s colossal failure to attract an audience by capitalizing on recently popular female characters like Harley Quinn and Wonder Woman. There are currently five movies in development based on those two characters alone, with Batgirl making six movies with female leads on the studio’s slate. The studio is also developing two distinctly different movies about the Joker, one featuring the Jared Leto version from Suicide Squad and the other a “gritty and grounded” movie set in the ’80s with Joaquin Phoenix being pursued to play the “Clown Prince of Crime.” This in addition to the Flash, Aquaman, Shazam! and Cyborg movies in various stages of production.
