Madeline Brewer Interested In Batgirl Role

While she did not get quite the enthusiastic response that writer Roxane Gay did, actress Madeline Brewer also threw her hat into the Batgirl ring on Twitter yesterday.

In response to Gay's tweet suggesting that she could crack the Batgirl code where Marvel's The Avengers director Joss Whedon failed, Brewer added, "This. Please. Yes. Also, I think I'd make a great Batgirl, no prob."

Brewer, a red-haired, 25-year-old New Jersey resident best known for her role as Janine in The Handmaid's Tale, might seem on paper to be perfect to play Barbara Gordon. After all, one school of thought on the Metropolis/Gotham City relationship is that Metropolis is Manhattan while Gotham is either one of the outer boroughs, or a city in Jersey.

Brewer has also appeared in multiple episodes of Orange is the New Black and Hemlock Grove, with appearances on Grimm and Black Mirror to bolster her genre cred.

She is hardly the first actress to campaign for the role, although she likely holds the distinction of being the first to do so post-Whedon. During Whedon's year developing the project, he (and the rest of the world) was lobbied by former child star Lindsay Lohan, who was insistent she could do the job.

Whedon bowed out yesterday, saying that he had been unable to come up with a satisfying story for the film. After his departure, industry trades reported that Warner Bros. was hoping to hire a woman to make the movie, following the critical and commercial successes of Wonder Woman and Black Panther, both of which made representation of underrepresented groups both on- and behind the camera a key part of their identities.

Whedon'd departure raises some questions about the next wave of DC movies, which was recently rumored to be leaning heavily on younger and more optimistic characters, with Batgirl and The Flash leading the way.

Prior to his departure, it seemed the film was being made because Whedon, a respected writer/director who had made his name on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, had a strong take. After leaving with an acknowledgment that his "take" was not strong enough to build a story around, Warner Bros. now seems to be developing the project from scratch, likely in response to fan enthusiasm that bubbled up when Whedon's version was announced.