Did you feel that crisp breeze whip through your hair just now? The choir of angels that began singing from atop the heavens? That’s because the best news, ever, right now, today in the world of superhero doings just happened: Michelle MacLaren has officially signed on to develop and direct the upcoming Wonder Woman movie. Oh snap, crackle, pop, y’all — this all just got way more interesting and exciting!
Because MacLaren is a woman! Directing a superhero movie! A big budget action film! That’s going to star a woman and focus almost exclusively on that woman! And not just any woman, but the original empowered lady badass and all-around queen when it comes to superheroes. We’re so glad this bit of speculation actually came true.
MacLaren may not be a household name — a truth that is a bit of a shame, all things/accomplishments considered — but the litany of projects her talents as a writer, director, and executive producer have helped to make better sure are: ever heard of Breaking Bad? The X-Files? The Leftovers? The Walking Dead? How about Game of Thrones? Yeah — we thought so!
That latter series is one of MacLaren’s most frequented director projects, and there is no more elaborate a production on the small screen — and probably on some of those bigger cinematic affairs, too — than Thrones. While hanging out in the Realm, MacLaren has directed several episodes, including major plot-moving outings like “Second Sons” and season three’s “The Bear and the Maiden Fair.” Her ability to work action scenes was more than evidenced in last season’s episodes “Oathkeeper” and “First of His Name.”
Throughout all of the episodes MacLaren has directed, though, the strength, nuance, duality, and cunning of the female characters being portrayed — be it Brienne or Cersei or Sansa or Daenerys — has regularly had an inherent ease to it, in addition to just generally being a focal point of the episodes she’s directed thus far. Something, no doubt, our Princess Diana of Themyscira would do well to have in spades when her story is transmitted to the big screen. And all of this makes her noted absence from the directors’ list for season five a heck of a lot more sensical (she’s been testing for the part since August). Clearly she could not head to Westeros for very good reasons; she was too busy trying to make sure Gal Gadot’s standalone film was as badass as it deserves to be.
Plus, let’s be real: it is about damn time they let a woman lasso herself an action-packed superhero film. The fallacy that women cannot handle such fodder is erroneous and MacLaren’s work on both Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones proves this. (Not to mention the filmographies of a number of other Y-chromosome free human beings.) Now if you’ll excuse us we have to go dance out this pure glee.
Wonder Woman will hit theaters on June 23rd, 2017
What do you think of the news? Let us know in the comments.
She’s a talented director, she’s worked on some of the best shows of the last five years (ever in the case of BB) and she’s not Zack Snyder or David Goyer.
There are lots of reasons why the appointment of Michelle MacLaren is good news for DC and Wonder Woman, the fact that she owns a uterus is none of them.
Someone got hired and this is good news simply because it was a woman? The good news should be that talent (male or female) is getting recognition from the industry regardless of other factors. I hate to say, but if someone got hired who happened to be black, would you be making so much noise about that specific detail over all others?
This is fantastic news, but your Twitter sharing tool is GHASTLY and needs to be fixed.