Jill Soloway is writing and directing the Red Sonja movie reboot, replacing Bryan Singer at the helm. Red Sonja was inspired by a couple of characters created by Robert E. Howard and made her debut in the Conan the Barbarian comic books in the early 1970s. She later made the jump to the big screen in 1985's Red Sonja, a film that starred Brigitte Nielsen and was originally meant to be a spinoff of the Arnold Schwarzenegger Conan movies.
Millennium Films has been working on a Red Sonja movie reboot for years now, and had Robert Rodriguez and Rose McGowan - then coming off their collaboration on Planet Terror - attached to direct and star in the film about a decade ago. That version never happened, however, and the project ended up spending most of the early to mid-2010s stuck in early development. Then, in September 2018, Millennium hired Bryan Singer to helm the reboot, despite the sexual assault accusations against him at the time. Even more allegations have been made against the filmmaker since then, forcing the studio to place the reboot on hold back in February.
Deadline is now reporting that Red Sonja is moving forward again, only with Soloway attached to both write and direct the fantasy adventure in Singer's place. Soloway issued a statement as part of the announcement, saying "Exploring this powerful mythology and evolving what it means to be a heroine is an artistic dream come true".
Soloway is best known for creating Amazon Studios' award-winning series Transparent. The show revolved around a family whose patriarch (Jeffrey Tambor) comes out as a transgender woman and helped pave the way for better representation of transgender people on the small screen in general. Soloway has since created the short-lived, but well-received dramedy series I Love Dick and has been recently working on The Transparent Movie Musical Finale. As its name implies, the finale is a two hour musical that will revolve around the death of Tambor's character Maura, who was killed off after Tambor left the show while the sexual harassment allegations against him were being investigated.
Many people have been calling for Singer to not only be dropped from Red Sonja, but also replaced by a woman as the director, ever since he was hired. And while it took Millennium longer than it should've, it's good to see they've finally done just that. Soloway has never directed an event movie of this scale before, but her work on Transparent alone shows that she's willing and able to subvert expectations when it comes to portraying women in film and television. Millennium isn't fast-tracking the reboot either, so Soloway should have plenty of time to assemble and fine-tune her Red Sonja script before taking the next step forward.
Source: Deadline