Supergirl To Return To Feature Film Land

 

While Supergirl found more creative success on television, the failings of the first Supergirl feature will not prevent Warner Bros. Pictures from trying it again.
Deadline reports the studio has commissioned 22 Jump Street‘s and The Cloverfield Paradox Oren Uziel to pen a screenplay based on the Girl of Steel. Created by Otto Binder and Al Plastino and first appearing in Superman #252, Kara Zor-El, Superman’s older cousin, was sent alongside the infant Kal-El to Earth as his guardian. But the vagaries of spaceflight meant she ended up arriving two decades later than Clark. Still a teenager, but with all the powers of a Superman, Kara had to navigate adolescence while also feeling the call to heroism Clark experienced as a teen.
And also like Clark, she became a member of the 30th Century’s Legion of Superheroes.
The character’s media exposure has been mixed over the years. She first appeared in live action with 1984’s Supergirl. Staring Helen Slater, produced by Ilya Salkind and directed by Jeannot Szwarc, the film is something of a camp classic now, but failed to prop up Salkind’s interest in the Superman characters or his bottom line. After the poor showings for Supergirl and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, Salkind relinquished his control of the Superman characters back to Warner Bros.
Kara next appeared on Superman: The Animated Series, with a fairly faithful retelling of her origin and a re-thought costume for the 1990s, where she was well-received; leading DC Comics to revive the original Kara Zor-El, who died in 1985’s Crisis on Infinite Earths.
The character returned to live action on Smallville in the form of Laura Vandervoort, who played the character throughout that show’s seventh season and in handful of episodes in subsequent seasons. But Kara’s most high-profile live-action turn was on the CBS series Supergirl. Starring Melissa Benoist, the show took the character in a new direction with popular tropes from network prime-time dramas and a number of deep pulls from the DC Comics character libraries. It also redefined her family with Slater appearing as her adoptive mother and Chyler Leigh in a co-starring role as her adoptive sister Alex. CBS cancelled the show after one year, but it was quickly picked up by The CW, where it joined that networks stable of DC Comics television shows. It begins its fourth season in October.
It is unlikely Benoist will play the role in the feature as Warner Bros. Pictures wants to establish its own stable of DC stars. But Deadline suggests the project is itself a sea-change for the studio, which is still struggling to put a successful stamp on its superhero properties. The site also says it is unclear if Superman Henry Cavill will appear in the film or sit it out so big screen Kara can establish herself on her own terms. Considering the television series as a road map, there seems to be an easy answer to this question.