The Old Guard's Gina Prince-Bythewood Already Has Another Female Hero Movie In Mind

Gina Prince-Bythewood is no stranger to directing comic book adaptations. Best known for her work on Love & Basketball, Prince-Bythewood also directed the pilot episode of Marvel's Cloak & Dagger and has The Old Guard, an adaptation of the Image Comics miniseries, coming to Netflix in July. While she has been pretty tied up with the massive undertaking starring Charlize Theron, KiKi Layne, and Chiwetel Ejiofor, Prince-Bythewood has not stopped thinking about other comic book movies in the mean time. In fact, the director tells ComicBook.com she already has another character in mind who she would like to bring to live-action life.

"I mean, doing the pilot of Cloak & Dagger was honestly, I mean, foremost, it's Marvel, so you start there," Prince-Bythewood said. "And then second, I loved the characters, I thought they were great. But I wanted to do that because I knew I wanted to get into this big sandbox and have the opportunity to do a big film like this and based on such a great property. So it was intentional, I love the genre, I love superheroes. It's just a beautiful thing, and I love where the genre's going. The fact that Black Panther could be that type of film that was so dope but also so cultural and so emotional. So there are a lot of characters out there, there's one in particular, but I can't talk about it because I hope that I do get the opportunity to bring this character to life. But she is female."

Prince-Bythewood is keeping which female hero she has in mind close to the vest, for now. She seems to be pointing towards a Marvel character as that catalog was on her mind but she did not give a hard indication of whether this is an idea from Marvel, DC, or other publisher character rosters.

The cast of The Old Guard is also quite interested in more comic book work. Not only did Ejiofor confirm he is returning to Marvel for the upcoming Doctor Strange sequel but Layne called upon studios to finally put Black women at the front of these titles, having previously expressed an interest in playing X-Men's Storm.

Prince-Bythewood is probably the right director for the job in this genre. Speaking of The Old Guard, she dubbed comic writer Greg Rucka's work as the most integral element of the story to get right in the live-action adaptation. "The most important thing is that Greg Rucka's work is represented on screen. Like, that's it," she explained. "I fell in love with the script, and as soon as I finished reading it, I hadn't been familiar with the comic, so I went to read the comic, fell in love with it all over again. I love his brain, I love his female characters. They just feel different. And I love the story that he created, the fact that these characters are immortal, mostly, I thought was just a brilliant conceit. So for me, his graphic novel was my bible, absolutely, and I wanted to stay true to it. Obviously things do need to be shifted a bit in terms of making an adaptation and the jump to the big screen, but I needed the characters to be there, I needed the heart, the story, the themes to all be there."

Watch ComicBook.com's full interview with The Old Guard director Gina Prince-Bythewood in the video above. The Old Guard arrives on Netflix on July 10.