Commissioner Gordon Actor J.K. Simmons Praises Batgirl Directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah
DC fans are growing excited to see the Batgirl movie, which is poised to bring the story of Barbara Gordon / Batgirl (Leslie Grace) to HBO Max subscribers. Helming the blockbuster are Adil el Arbi and Bilall Fallah, who previously directed Bad Boys for Life and are directing and producing Disney+'s upcoming Ms. Marvel show. In a recent interview with Discussing Film, Batgirl co-star J.K. Simmons, who will be returning to portray Commissioner James Gordon in the film, spoke about Arbi and Fallah's work on the project, and teased the "energy and passion" that they are bringing to its story.
"Dude, those guys are crazy! I don't know how they do it, and they had been shooting for four weeks or so by the time I joined," Simmons revealed. "I met them via Zoom, and I was under the L track outside of my boxing gym in Chicago when we first spoke. They just bring such an energy. I've already compared them to a couple of like two-year-old Weimaraners, who have been pent up in the back of a station wagon all day and somebody just let them loose. The energy and the passion that they bring for making movies was a really fun energy to be around and then the fact that they also really know what they're doing is is a nice part of the overall experience."
Batgirl is written by Christina Hodson, whose work includes Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) and the upcoming The Flash movie. The film is expected to also star Brendan Fraser as Firefly, Ivory Aquino as Alysia Yeoh, and Jacob Scipio, Rebecca Front, Corey Johnson, and Ethan Kai cast in currently-unknown roles.
"It's much more than I got to do in my brief stint as Commissioner Gordon in Zack Snyder's film," Simmons said of his return as Gordon in the same interview. "And really, it was fun because it was a completely different side of Commissioner Gordon. All that we saw in the little snippets of Zack Snyder's Justice League, in either the original or in Zack's brilliant, expanded cut, it was just Commissioner Gordon being business-like and needing Batman's help. In this film, I think I'm allowed to say since it does center on Batgirl, we see much more of Commissioner Gordon at home."
Batgirl is set to be released at a later date exclusively on HBO Max.