Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah would have been fielding plenty of offers in the wake of Bad Boys for Life, which scored the best reviews the classic buddy cop franchise had ever seen, which is no mean feat when the duo were bringing Mike Lowrey and Marcus Burnett back to the big screen for the first time in seventeen years.
A 77% Rotten Tomatoes score and $426 million haul at the box office is a solid return for an R-rated threequel, but the filmmakers surprised a lot of people when they settled on HBO Max’s Batgirl as their next project. For one thing, they’ve been attached to Netflix’s Beverly Hills Cop 4 since before they took the Bad Boys gig, but the script from DCEU veteran Christina Hodson must have really caught their eye.
Production is rumored to begin as soon as November, with an eye to having Barbara Gordon’s solo debut hit streaming before the end of 2022. As you can see in the image below, El Arbi is hyped to be standing in his production office, with the iconic insignia taking pride of place on the carpet.
Leslie Grace is just as excited as El Arbi and Fallah, with the actress admitting she can barely wrap her head around the fact she gets to play a superhero in an effects-driven blockbuster. Batgirl has been in the works for while and gone through numerous iterations, but shooting is finally gearing up to begin with a talented creative team in place, so the movie will hopefully be worth the wait.
