This past weekend was a major one for DC Comics fans, with DC Fandome unrolling across four hours on Saturday morning/afternoon – the presentation providing a lot of updates and reveals about what’s coming from the multimedia franchise in the coming years. We learned a lot about a wide variety of projects that are presently in the works, but evidently one deal that closed just a tad too late to be included in the virtual event is the casting of Bad Boys for Life’s Jacob Scipio in the upcoming Batgirl movie.
DC Fandome included a segment during its runtime dedicated to a conversation between directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, screenwriter Christina Hodson, and star Leslie Grace about Batgirl – but one detail left out of the chat was the news that a new actor was coming aboard the project. According to Deadline, Jacob Scipio is now set to reunite with El Arbi and Fallah, with whom he previously worked on the aforementioned Bad Boys sequel.
What’s unfortunate about this casting news coming now as opposed to two days ago is that details are beyond slim in regards to what role the actor will be playing. Had this been announced during DC Fandome, the reveal would have likely included information about the character he is playing – but instead we are just left to speculate.
Batgirl is being made as an HBO Max original film, and Leslie Gordon will star as the titular hero a.k.a. Barbara Gordon – the daughter of famed Gotham Police Commissioner James Gordon (who is now confirmed to be played by J.K. Simmons, as previously seen in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Justice League). As of now we know nothing about the plot of the movie, but we do know that the lead character will be wearing her purple suit and sport flowing red hair, as evidenced in the official concept art below:
Jacob Scipio earned a lot of positive buzz for his villainous turn in Bad Boys for Life, and he now has a number of big movies set to come out in the next couple years. He has a role in the Nicolas Cage meta action movie The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent, and will be a part of the latest action ensemble gathered for The Expendables 4.
Batgirl does not yet have an official release date, but it is clearly making massive strides through pre-production, so presumably it won’t be long until cameras are rolling. If principal photography does start before the end of the year, it’s definitely possible that the release could follow through with plans to be out in 2022.
As more actors are added to the cast of Batgirl, we’ll hopefully start to get more bits and details regarding what to expect from the film – so be on the lookout for future updates. To learn about everything that is coming our way in the coming years from the larger franchise, check out our Upcoming DC Movies guide.
