BATGIRL Casts Leslie Grace as Barbara Gordon

 
Warner Bros. has found their new Batgirl.

According to Deadline, the upcoming HBO Max movie Batgirl, based on the DC Comics superhero, has cast Leslie Grace as lead character Batgirl/Barbara Gordon, the daughter of Gotham City Police Commissioner James Gordon.

The article states that Grace beat out other final contenders Isabella Merced, Zoey Deutch and Haley Lu Richardson with her audition. The DC Extended Universe film is rumored to feature the Batman villain Firefly.

Batgirl will be released on HBO Max, one of the first DC characters to debut exclusively on the streaming service in a movie.  Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah will direct from a script by Christina Hodson. Kristin Burr will serve as producer.

Grace, 26, is an actress, singer and songwriter of Dominican heritage who played Nina Rosario in Jon M. Chu's film adaptation of In the Heights, based on Lin-Manuel Miranda's Tony Award-winning musical. She has also released two studio albums, Pasión (2009) and Leslie Grace (2013).

Created in 1967 by William Dozier, Julius Schwartz and Carmine Infantino, Barbara Gordon first appeared as Batgirl in Detective Comics (vol.1) #359, and later that same year on the Batman television series episode "Enter Batgirl, Exit Penguin", as the daughter of Gotham City's Police Commissioner James Gordon.  In her debut story in the comics, while driving to a costume ball dressed as a female version of Batman, Barbara Gordon intervened in a kidnapping attempt on Bruce Wayne by the super villain Killer Moth, which gained Batman's attention and led to a crime-fighting career.  Although Batman insisted she give up crime-fighting because of her gender, Batgirl disregarded his objections.

In the controversial 1988 graphic novel Batman: The Killing Joke, writer Alan Moore had Batman's arch-enemy The Joker shoot and paralyze Barbara in an attempt to drive her father insane, thereby proving to Batman that anyone can be morally compromised.  One year later, writers John Ostrander and Kim Yale gave Barbara Gordon new life in Suicide Squad (vol.1) #23 as Oracle, a mysterious computer expert who assisted and supplied information to various DC Comics heroes in their fight against crime.  The character's popularity led to the creation of the series Birds of Prey in 1996, where writer Chuck Dixon partnered Oracle with Black Canary and a rotating cast of female DC superheroes.

In 2011, DC Comics rebooted their continuity in The New 52, effectively making the character younger in a modern timeline where she became active again as Batgirl.  In the new continuity, the events of The Killing Joke took place three years before current events, but it was established she was paraplegic during that time.  Barbara Gordon regained her mobility after undergoing experimental surgery at a South African clinic.  In recent months, Barbara has a new life as a PhD student in the hip Gotham borough of Burnside, in between adventures as Batgirl and with the Birds of Prey.

Grace will be the fifth actress to portray the character in live-action, after Yvonne Craig on the Batman TV series, Dina Meyer on Birds of Prey, Jeté Laurence on Gotham, and Savannah Welch on Titans.