After being the author of the scripts of two dark thrillers Shut In (2016) and Unforgettable (2017), Christina Hodson jumped to the first division of blockbuster writers being the author of the screenplay for the upcoming Transformers spin-off Bumblebee (2018), currently in post-production and due to come out in December this year.
Warner Bros. and DC Entertainment have been working on a Batgirl film adaptation for a while. First, filmmaker Joss Whedon, in charge of the recent and successful The Avengers (2012) and Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), was attached to be working on a script for the adventures of Barbara Gordon and her vigilante alter ego. But when Whedon recently dropped out the project, the super-heroine flick became orphan of a script. In an exclusive from THR, it was announced that Christina Hodson has been the chosen one to take over the writing duties for the desired movie adaptation.
Batgirl appeared for the first time in Batman issue #139, back in 1961. It is not until 1967 that she took the personality of Barbara Gordon. Batgirl operates in Gotham City, allying herself with Batman and the original Robin, Dick Grayson, along with other masked vigilantes. The character appeared regularly in Detective Comics, Batman Family, and several other books produced by DC until 1988. That year, Barbara Gordon appeared in Barbara Kesel‘s Batgirl Special #1, in which she retires from crime-fighting. She subsequently appeared in Alan Moore‘s graphic novel Batman: The Killing Joke where, in her civilian identity, she is shot by the Joker and left paraplegic. Although she is reimagined as the computer expert and information broker Oracle by editor Kim Yale and writer John Ostrander the following year, her paralysis sparked debate about the portrayal of women in comics, particularly violence depicted toward female characters.
We must remember Christina Hodson is not unfamiliar with the Batgirl world since she was the creator of her character for another upcoming super-heroes movie Birds of Prey, which Cathy Yan has been set to direct. What is still unknown is if Hodson will take the story from where Joss Whedon left it, or to the opposite if she will build her own approach to the character for the Batgirl solo film.
