James Gunn tapped woke Birds of Prey writer Christina Hodson to pen the upcoming Batman film that will be directed by Andy Muschetti.
Scooper Jeff Sneider at The InSneider broke the news that Hodson will pen the script and that she was tapped to do sometime late last year.
Gunn previously indicated that the film will be inspired by Grant Morrison’s run on the book that began back in 2006. He said, the film, which is tentatively titled The Brave and the Bold, would tell the “story of Batman and his actual son, Damian Wayne,” and be “based on Grant Morrison’s great comic book run.”
Gunn added, “Damian Wayne is my favorite Robin. He’s a little assassin who Batman tries to get in line. So this is the story of two of them and the beginning of the sort of the Bat family in the DCU.”
Gunn hasn’t really shared any other details about the film although he did tell Rolling Stone in June, “Batman has to have a reason for existing, right? So Batman can’t just be ‘Oh, we’re making a Batman movie because Batman’s the biggest character in all of Warner Bros.,’ which he is. But because there’s a need for him in the DCU and a need that he’s not exactly the same as Matt’s Batman.”
“But yet he’s not a campy Batman. I’m not interested in that,” Gunn continued. “I’m not interested in a funny, campy Batman, really. So we’re dealing with that. I think I have a way in, by the way. I think I really know what it’s — I just am dealing with the writer to make sure that we can make it a reality.”
As for Hodson, she previously penned the disastrous Birds of Prey film starring Margot Robbi. She also wrote Bumblebee as well as The Flash and the scrapped Batgirl movie.
On top of her work, she’s an outspoken intersectional feminist and gender ideology activist. While promoting Birds of Prey, she revealed that her company Hodson Exports partnered with Margot Robbie’s LuckyChap Entertainment to create the Lucky Exports Pitch Program. The program is a DEI initiative. SyFy.com explained, “The six chosen writers, all female-identifying, participated in a four-week writers' room that resulted in half a dozen pitches ready to be sold. Those pitches, explains Hodson, will be ‘taken out’ soon, hopefully landing all of them with deals that will eventually see them on the big screen.”
“I looked at the WGA report, and the numbers within the feature writing space are really, really bad,” Hodson explained. “In the last WGA report, men outnumbered women among working feature writers about three to one. Of approximately 1,600 working feature writers, there are only 114 people of color of either gender. That number was so staggering to me. I was like, 'There's gotta be something we can do about it.’”
The feminism bleeds into her work as well. She admitted as much while discussing Birds of Prey with ScreenRant. She was asked, “This movie's full of empowerment in a great, great story with all these females. Can you talk to me about how that felt bringing that to the screen?”
Hodson replied, “Yeah, honestly, it just happened pretty organically and naturally. It began, just as you say, with these four individual stories. And it kind of naturally came about that, thematically, each one of these characters feels in some way kind of trapped. So the emancipation isn't just of Harley Quinn, it's of all of the characters, all of the heroes and even in some ways the villain as well. That theme kind of rang true for all of them; that arc of empowerment and emancipation would kind of come out.”
What could possibly go wrong?
If you're excited for anything that James Gunn has planned for DC, you're retarded and I can't help you.