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After years stuck in development hell, the DCEU’s Batgirl has finally gained some real momentum. Joss Whedon was once circling the project before dropping out, with the latest draft of the screenplay hailing from franchise veteran Christina Hodson, who also penned the scripts for Birds of Prey and The Flash.
DC Films president Walter Hamada revealed his intentions to send the movie straight to HBO Max, but that hasn’t stopped Batgirl from recruiting highly-rated and fast-rising Bad Boys for Life duo Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah to direct, with pre-production beginning to ramp up ahead of a November shoot, in order to meet a projected early-to-mid 2023 release.
A new casting call has reportedly been leaked, and it looks as though J.K. Simmons could be out as Commissioner Gordon. The Academy Award winner only made one appearance as Batman’s trusted confidant in Justice League, but he was an inspired choice for the role, and the fact he’s shown up in twelve movies and eleven TV shows in the last three years alone would indicate he’d be happy to return if asked.
As per the casting call, an actress in her early 20s is being sought for Barbara Gordon, a strong supporting actor in their 50s is wanted for her father and police commissioner James Gordon, with the villain being a decade older and a disgruntled firefighter, which is believed to be Firefly. That would put 66 year-old Simmons firmly out of the running, and invite even more questions as to how Batgirl fits into the grand scheme of things.
Simmons is technically still the DCEU’s canonical Gordon, with Jeffrey Wright occupying the role in The Batman‘s continuity, so Batgirl could either be establishing yet another pocket of the multiverse, or simply ignoring the what’s come before to forge its own path.
In 2019, nine movies earned over a billion dollars at the box office, with Avengers: Endgame seizing the title of cinema’s biggest-ever hit after bringing in almost $2.8 billion. However, the Coronavirus pandemic has had such a devastating effect on the theatrical industry that Fast & Furious 9 becoming the first title since Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker to reach $500 million is definitely something worth celebrating.
Bad Boys for Life held onto the pandemic-era crown for well over a year before it was eventually toppled by Godzilla vs. Kong, thanks largely to the MonsterVerse blockbuster’s strong performance in China, with the business rebounding in the country a lot quicker than it has on domestic shores. The same can be said of F9, which has sailed passed the $200 million barrier in the territory, as well as racing past $125 million in the United States in less than two weeks.
It’s hugely encouraging news, especially when the latest chapter in The Fast Saga is toppling records left, right and center, so things are looking good that the hotly-anticipated return of the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Black Widow will experience similar success, despite Scarlett Johansson’s solo debut scoring a hybrid release on Disney Plus Premier Access.
Outside of Fast & Furious 9 and Black Widow, there aren’t too many titles in the pipeline you could see coming close to the fabled billion-dollar mark, with the notable exception of fellow MCU stablemate Spider-Man: Far From Home. We’ll take what we can get, though, and at least the signs are hugely encouraging that things may finally be getting back to some semblance of normality after the eighteen months of doomsaying and uncertainty that brought the movie business to its knees.