Here’s a post that has been sitting in my drafts for a couple of months, but it’s still relevant now, so let me finish it.

When James Gunn and Peter Safran were named the co-CEOs of DC Studios, one of the projects that they announced was a movie called SUPERGIRL: WOMAN OF TOMORROW, which is based on a comic-book miniseries of the same name (written by Tom King & drawn by Bilquis Evely. When I heard this news I soon bought the book to see for myself and…well, I wasn’t impressed. I gave up reading it after the first couple of issues, I think. Maybe at some point I’ll try to go back and finish it. Nevertheless, I was still intrigued by the concept, it’s possible I’ll like the eventual movie better than the book?

Since then more news has come out about the film. Ana Nogueira wrote the script. Milly Alcock was cast as Supergirl. And last month we got official news that the film will be released on June 26, 2026, and is going to be directed by Craig Gillespie.

Now here’s where today’s topic comes in. It was first leaked in April that Gillespie was in talks to direct the film, although there was no official confirmation of this at the time from James Gunn or anyone at DC Studios. When this happened, I saw several people commenting on THREADS wondering why they could find a female director instead? I replied to one person asking if every female superhero movie had to be directed by a woman and they replied:

It would be for the best, yes. Women have lived the female experience their entire lives, thinking that a man is better suited to tell that story is just idiotic.

Website The Mary Sue posted an article on the news, which was mostly flattering about Gillespie as a director, based on his track record, but did end with the line:

In any case, it’s worth noting that Gunn and Safran have now hired three directors, all of them white and male.

*Note, the other two are Andy Muschietti, who is set to direct a Batman movie, & James Mangold, who is set to direct a Swamp Thing movie. Plus Gunn himself, who’s directing Superman.

Something about that last line bugged me. The article makes it clear that he’s a great director, including his work directing the movie I, Tonya, which is centered on the life of a woman (which I saw, and loved), but still has to make a dig on the fact that he’s a man (and a White one at that). I mean, are we arguing that only women should direct movies that star women? Would that also mean that only men should be allowed to direct movies that star men? I doubt any critics of this choice would agree with that.

That being said, I don’t want to come off like one of those Youtubers screaming about “Wokeness” in everything. I do think the commenter on Threads has a point about the shared “lived experience” of women, which could also apply to directors of Color in movies, as well. I’m going to defer to my man Denzel, for this excellent point he made:

I agree with what he’s saying, sometimes it’s a good idea to get someone with a shared cultural experience to direct certain films. And that can apply to gender, race, sexuality, religion, and other topics. Using Denzel’s example, I’m sure there are tons of straight directors who could have directed a great biopic of Harvey Milk, but Gus Van Zant was probably able to approach the subject in a more sensitive way than most of them because he is also a gay man. But I think we should look at it on a case-by-case basis, rather than like a general rule.

Taking it to the subject of superhero movies, I think it was also a probably a good idea to find a Black director for the Black Panther films and a woman director for the Wonder Woman films, as the issue of race is intergral to the character of BP, and WW was literally created to a symbol of female empowerment. But let’s take a character like Blade. I don’t think a Black director is necessary for that upcoming reboot (as it wasn’t for his original trilogy). Just get someone who’s good at directing horror and action scenes.

So by the same token, I don’t think Supergirl has that same necessity as Wonder Woman. Especially not with this particular film in the which the entire takes place in outer space. She’s an alien, encountering other aliens. If anything, the only concern I have about Gillespie is not that he’s a man, it’s that he has no experience directing science fiction or space opera. But when it comes to the character of Kara Zor-El, if he handle that character as well as he did Tonya Harding and Pam Anderson, then he should be just fine.