Posted in: Casting, Movies | Tagged: Hannah John-Kamen, millennium, movies, red sonja

Hannah John-Kamen Will Star as Red Sonja

The big-screen adaptation of Red Sonja has found their leading lady, and they got someone really interesting. Red Sonja, which is published by Dynamite Entertainment, who rightfully came under heavy scrutiny last summer for their connections to Comicsgate, has been in development hell since 2010 and seems to be one of those projects that keeps getting kicked while it's down.

Then again, maybe they shouldn't have hired Bryan Singer of all people to direct it in 2018. That didn't end up happening, and the movie was removed from Millennium Films slate, and Singer was fired from the project. We finally got some more movement in June of 2019 that Transparent creator Joey Soloway was taking on the project, and in February, we learned that Tasha Huo, who is showrunning the new Tomb Raider anime, will be writing the script. Today, according to The Hollywood Reporter, Hannah John-Kamen will star as the titular Red Sonja in the movie.

"Hannah is a very talented actress who we've been following for years and she IS Red Sonja," said Soloway in a statement. "Her range, sensibilities and strength are all qualities we have been looking for and we couldn't be more excited to embark on this journey together."

John-Kamen is a fantastic actress, and this move seems to indicate that they might be going somewhere new and different with this story. What will be extremely interesting will be seeing Red Sonja, who is kind of the epitome of the hyper-sexualized female warrior, through the eyes of a woman like Huo as the writer and directed by someone who is non-binary and gender-nonconforming like Soloway. Now we have a woman of color portraying the traditionally white hero [which is going to go over well with certain subsets of the fandom. You know who you are, and you're wrong].

The costume is the thing I'm the most interested in. Red Sonja is kind of the epitome of a sexualized female heroine, but that sort of thing isn't as accepted these days. So walking the line between being faithful to the source material and modernizing it is going to be something Soloway, Huo, and John-Kaman are going to be walking very carefully. We'll have to see how it all turns out in the end. At the moment, there isn't a release date or a start date for the production.

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