Brendan Fraser will play the villain in HBO Max's Batgirl movie
He might be playing Firefly, which means Batgirl could be an adaptation of a specific Batgirl origin comic
We haven’t heard much about HBO Max’s Batgirl movie since this summer, when In The Heights’ Leslie Grace was cast as Barbara Gordon herself (spoiler alert: she’s Batgirl), but now it sounds like Warner Bros. has at least found the movie’s villain—arguably the most important piece for something related to Batman. This comes from Deadline, which says Brendan Fraser is set to be the bad guy in Batgirl.
The bad guy in question isn’t a particularly interesting one, but it is one whose appearance will let us draw some conclusions about what’s going to happen in Batgirl. Deadline says the villain will be Firefly, a former Hollywood special effects expert who becomes an arsonist, which is big because he also happens to be one of the main bad guys in DC’s fairly good Batgirl: Year One series. Ergo, directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah (from Bad Boys For Life) are probably doing something similar to that comic.
Batgirl: Year One is notable for being the moment when DC recalibrated Batgirl’s canonical origin, turning her from a woman who idolized Batman to a frustrated teen who makes a Batman-style costume to stick it to the various men in her life who thinks she’s too much of a girl to take care of herself. She fights crime not because she’s forced into it (like Robin) or because she egotistically believes that it’s her destiny to defeat evil (like Batman), but because she’s smart and capable and wants to do good things even if—or especially if—nobody thinks she can.
So if that’s the story they’re doing, it’s a good sign. Also, Brendan Fraser rules and he should continue to be in more things, even if this will be his second DC Comics thing on HBO Max. (He’s also Robotman on Doom Patrol.)