Creator of Transparent Jill Soloway replacing Bryan Singer on Red Sonja movie

Jill Soloway, creator of Amazon series Transparent, will take over writing and directing duties on the upcoming Red Sonja movie from Bryan Singer (X-Men), according to a report from Deadline. Singer was dropped from the project after the Atlantic published an exposé of Singer’s alleged sexual history with underage boys.

Originally, producer Avi Lerner — who also has a history of sexual harassment allegations — defended Singer, but a month later, Millennium Films put the Red Sonja film on hold and a month after that, Millennium removed Singer.

Millennium Films has been developing a Red Sonja project for over a decade. The sword-and-sorcery character tends to fall into stereotypical male gaze-oriented depictions, complete with skimpy bikini chainmail. Since 2013, Dynamite Entertainment’s Red Sonja comics have attempted to push back on that perception, tapping comics writers Gail Simone (Wonder Woman, Birds of Prey) and Amy Chu (Poison Ivy: Cycle of Life and Death), and a slew of female comics artists to craft the warrior woman’s modern stories. The involvement of Soloway — a non-binary creator whose works regularly tackle issues of feminism, gender, and sexuality — may indicate that this version of Red Sonja will be a layered tale of female empowerment after all.

On the original schedule, Red Sonja was supposed to start filming in Bulgaria in spring 2020. There has been no casting information.