Awhile back, it was announced that a Red Sonja film is currently in the works and is set to be directed by Jill Soloway (known for hit TV series, Transparent). The Red Sonja character has had an interesting comic book history. Created in 1973, the character was initially a Marvel Comics character. However, in 2005, the character found a new home at Dynamite Entertainment. Over the years, the character has been killed off, reincarnated and soft-rebooted a couple of times and now a new Red Sonja comic series is being written by Amy Chu.
Think of Red Sonja as a female Conan the Barbarian type character (she actually has appeared alongside Conan on numerous occasion). She has superhuman strength, speed, endurance, agility, reflexes and for some reason wears an armoured bikini. While there previously hasn’t been much news and updates concerning the film, now director Jill Soloway has compared her still-in-development film to important entries in the comic book movie world. In an interview with Deadline, the Soloway had this to say:
“I can really have so much fun with Red Sonja. I see her a little bit more like the first kind of bad girl superhero. Sort of like the Batman of The Dark Knight or Deadpool, you know? The world is changing so much right now for superheroes, that I just really look forward to not only going to the edge of what I’ve ever written and directed before, but to the edge of the genre as well.”
While we shouldn’t put too much weight on the The Dark Knight comparison — remember how Simon Kinberg compared X-Men: Dark Phoenix to the Christopher Nolan masterpiece? — Red Sonja’s backstory (she gets raped by a mercenary) does call for a serious and nuanced adaptation. Looking at Soloway’s resume and her obvious passion for the character, it’s safe to say that the project is in good hands.
“I can’t wait. I’m super excited. I get to write it as well, which is really a dream come true. I know it feels different when you compare it to Transparent, but for me, it feels just really very much like it’s coming from the same place.”
Soloway continued by saying:
“I’ve always talked about myself as doing work that attempts to heal the divided feminine in our culture, the idea that women get kind of chopped up into wife or other woman or good girl, bad girl or Charlie’s Angels or all the women on Sex in the City, and that this idea of the divided feminine means that women get like a small slice to be…
All my work is really about humans searching for some divine feminine, asking these questions about God and looking for meaning. So, for me to transfer that into the world of Red Sonja felt incredibly natural, because Red Sonja is a very different kind of superhero. She’s not really typical.”
Red Sonja does not have a release date as of now.
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