There will always be only ONE Batgirl.........Yvonne Craig........may she rest in peace...............
Posted on 02/23/2018 7:30:23 AM PST by EdnaMode
The Bat signal is being dimmed … for now. Joss Whedon is saying goodbye to DC Entertainment heroine Batgirl.
Whedon, the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer among other pop culture touchstones, is exiting the Warner Bros. feature project, which he was writing and was slated to direct.
"Batgirl is such an exciting project, and Warners/DC such collaborative and supportive partners, that it took me months to realize I really didn't have a story," Whedon on Thursday told The Hollywood Reporter in a statement. Referring to DC president Geoff Johns and Warner Bros. Picture Group president Toby Emmerich, he added, "I'm grateful to Geoff and Toby and everyone who was so welcoming when I arrived, and so understanding when I…uh, is there a sexier word for 'failed'?"
Whedon came on to the Batgirl project in March 2017 with the hopes of bringing to the big screen a companion to the female empowerment icon Wonder Woman, with this one tied to the most popular character in comics, Batman. Batgirl is Barbara Gordon, the daughter of Gotham City police commissioner James Gordon.
But sources say Whedon, after a year of trying, could not crack the code of what a Batgirl movie should be. Wonder Woman, meanwhile, became a cultural phenomenon as well as one of the biggest hits and most acclaimed movies of 2017.
Industry sources add that even as Whedon faced story issues, in today's cultural environment, a male filmmaker may have faced greater public scrutiny if he were to have tackled a movie with lead characters of such feminist importance as Batgirl or Wonder Woman, much like a white filmmaker would have seen backlash taking on the Black Panther movie.
Whedon has been credited as a pioneering voice for female-focused genre fare, having created the hit TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer two decades ago.
He does have a strong relationship with Warner Bros., which brought him into the company's DC fold to take over last year's Justice League when director Zack Snyder was sidelined due to a family tragedy.
Whedon will face no shortage of suitors, as Netflix, Apple and others will likely vie for the next creation from the writer-director behind such cult TV series as Firefly and Dollhouse.
To be replaced by the more accurate Batshit Crazy Woman...
We’re so far down the rabbit hole that there’s no turning back.
It is? It was always an early example of PC tokenism and a cynical plan to get girls to buy comics (which they never did anyway).
There will always be only ONE Batgirl.........Yvonne Craig........may she rest in peace...............
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdiXvz6Kmhc&list=RDOdiXvz6Kmhc
Whedon has a reputation for unfinished projects.
How about a bats woman who could change her race, color, creed, national origin and even gender as the situation warranted.
Teenage waif beats up men outweighing her by 150 pounds - just like every other Joss Whedon production. :-)
(Still missing Firefly. Whedon got screwed by Fox on that.)
I don’t think gender or race of the director really matter.
The problem is dealing with a super-hero female type, who was marginally covered in the comics, and basically a very limited character in the 1960s series for a couple of shows. No one knows how to take the basic character and fill in the charm, charisma, or focus. Even for the evil anti-Batgirl character...can anyone even name someone who pops up? They’d have to go and rehash one of the Batman villains.
In the comics version....you just didn’t equate Batgirl to Wonder Woman, Black Canary, or such. It was a weak creation in the first place.
Based on the success of “Black Panther,” Hollywood should only produce films with an all Black casts.
LOL, perfect description. :D
Doesn’t have to. But it certainly helps to not have bad history. Before the divorce and all the dirt that came out Whedon was well regarded as a creator of and writer for female characters, now with all that dirt hanging around any misstep would be pounced on.
The producers of Gotham should be put in charge.
[Blind Gossip] This famous multi-hyphenate director says that he has chosen to exit from a huge movie project because he just couldn’t figure out how to make the story work.
That’s not the whole story.
It took months for them to convince him to step down. They wanted him out because they knew trouble was coming in the form of multiple complaints from women on previous films. This is a female protagonist film, so they didn’t want the controversy. Problem is that he had a contract, so they had to be careful about their approach. It had to look like he “volunteered” to leave. I don’t know what they had to give him to make him go away, but it had to be substantial.
We do not know who is up at bat to replace him, but certainly hope it will be someone who is more respectful of women.
Similar: Let Me Give You A Fat Nickname
Director:
Movie:
[Optional] Who should the company hire to replace him?
Barbara Gordon’s best story arc is about becoming Oracle.
But they’ll never use that a multi-million dollar movie.
She wasn't exactly as feminist icon in her early appearances:
On the other hand, she's now most (in)famous for being shot and raped by the Joker in Alan Moore's critically acclaimed graphic novel "The Killing Joke":
Too bad he’s not exiting a free helicopter ride. He’s a full on SJW, he must have been on a year long bender to do Firefly.
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