DC and WB have already made strides to support more diverse directors behind-the-scenes, putting Patty Jenkins in charge of Wonder Woman. Here are a few suggestions for who they might hire to continue the trend with Batgirl…
Ava DuVernay
Ava Duvernay’s A Wrinkle in Time is one of the most highly-anticipated movies of 2018, and it’s not hard to understand why. Not only are the visuals we’ve seen in the trailers mindblowing and original, but DuVernay is an Oscar-nominated director who has proven herself a talented, versatile filmmaker with movies like Selma, the documentary 13th, and her TV series Queen Sugar. DuVernay would make a great Batgirl director, but with whispers of a possible Star Wars gig in her future, it’s unclear if the already busy director would be available for the job.
Karyn Kusama
Girlfight. Aeon Flux. Jennifer’s Body. Karyn Kusama has been making badass, female-centric movies for a while now, starting with Girlfight, which she wrote and directed at the age of 27. Batgirl would be a logical next step for this director who has already demonstrated, with Aeon Flux, that she knows how to handle a bigger budget film.
Kathryn Bigelow
Like most people on this list, Kathryn Bigelow is one of those insanely-overqualified directors who would have the choice of any movie in the industry… if she were a man. The Oscar-winning director of The Hurt Locker, as well as films like Point Break, Zero Dark Thirty, and Detroit, Bigelow has proven that she can do any kind of movie she sets her lens on. Would she consider something like Batgirl?
Dee Rees
Dee Rees just got an Oscar nom for her screenwriting work on Mudbound, but she’s a killer director, too. Not only did she direct the post-WWII drama about two men, one white and one black, who return to rural Mississippi following the war, but she has stretched her genre muscles with a turn on the Phillip K. Dick anthology series Electric Dreams, as well as episodes of Empire and the docudrama series When We Rise. DC and WB would be lucky to have her.
Angela Robinson
Angela Robinson directed superhero-adjacent film Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, which should have gotten a much more receptive welcome than it did. Having previously done work on TV shows like The L Word, Hung, and Charlie’s Angels, Robinson has cut her teeth on both the big and small screen. We’d like to see her be given an opportunity to go even bigger with a movie like Batgirl.
Michelle MacLaren
Michelle MacLaren has helmed episodes of every TV show from Game of Thrones and Westworld to The X-Files and Breaking Bad. She’s one of those filmmakers and producers who knows her way around the industry, and who knows how to tell an effective story within a budget across networks and genres. MacLaren was originally attached to direct Wonder Woman before leaving over “creative differences.” Hopefully, those creative differences were not dealbreakers because we’d love to see MacLaren helm Batgirl.
