Roxane Gay probably isn’t working on a Batgirl movie — but maybe a book

Yesterday, Joss Whedon stepped away from a potential Batgirl movie at Warner Bros., saying that after months of work he “just really didn’t have a story.” Naturally, the online discussion was rich with incident.

Among those incidents, writer, editor and professor Roxane Gay, known for her eloquence and outspokenness on issues of feminism, race and queer identity, tweeted that she was available for Whedon’s vacated position. Gay recently completed her first superhero comics writing on Marvel’s Black Panther: World of Wakanda, but she’s probably better known for her books Difficult Women or Hunger, or for her opinions writing.

What nobody expected was that someone from inside the Batgirl-adjacent industry would get back to her through Twitter.

Outlets from Slash Film to Variety ran with the story today: Roxane Gay had tweeted about writing a Batgirl movie and a Warner Bros. executive had responded positively. But don’t start planning your night at the theater just yet. While Michele Wells does work under the Warner Bros. umbrella, she’s not necessarily a part of the movie-making arm of the company. Her title, listed in a recent New York Times article, is vice president for content strategy at DC Comics. Polygon has reached out to DC for more clarification.

This all makes sense, given that that New York Times article which quotes her is one announcing DC Zoom and DC Ink, two upcoming lines of graphic novels for teens and young readers. Zoom and Ink’s books will feature DC Comics superheroes and be written and drawn by a combination of top DC talent and some of the bestselling writers in the YA literature world, like Meg Cabot, Melissa de la Cruz and Danielle Page.

It seems much more likely that Wells would be courting Gay for a Batgirl graphic novel in this exchange — and that’s still an exciting match of talent to project.