Emer­ald Fen­nell is lin­ing up a super­hero movie for her next film

It’s become stan­dard oper­at­ing pro­ce­dure in today’s Hol­ly­wood that when­ev­er an up-and-com­ing direc­tor has a splashy suc­cess with an inde­pen­dent project, they’re prompt­ly offered a gig on a fran­chise film with a bud­get in the hun­dreds of millions.

Some have tak­en the offer (Chloé Zhao​’s take on The Eter­nals for the Marvel/​Disney behe­moth will come lat­er this year) while oth­ers have balked at the con­ces­sion on per­son­al author­i­ty over their work (Lucre­cia Mar­tel, for one, mem­o­rably walked upon learn­ing that the stu­dio would take the reins on the action sequences).

Promis­ing Young Woman writer/​director Emer­ald Fen­nell, awash with Oscar nom­i­na­tions for Best Pic­ture, Direc­tor, and Orig­i­nal Screen­play, now finds her­self at that exact junc­ture. And she’s said yes; Vari­ety reports that Fennell’s sec­ond fea­ture will find her bring­ing the char­ac­ter Zatan­na from DC’s deep-benched ros­ter to the screen.

In the comics, the reg­u­lar Jus­tice League affil­i­ate Zatan­na is revered as one of the universe’s most pow­er­ful sor­cer­ess­es, some­thing of a distaff Doc­tor Strange except with a stage magician’s panache. Her top hat and stock­ings call to mind some­thing more Hou­diniesque, less mys­ti­cal and more the­atri­cal, not to detract from her estimable pow­ers of prestidigitation.

Though she has appeared in a ter­tiary role on TV’s Smal­l­ville, this will be Zatanna’s first show­ing on the sil­ver screen, and Fennell’s first dal­liance with the upper­most lev­els of the stu­dio sys­tem. Some will see this as cause for cel­e­bra­tion, as a ris­ing tal­ent gets a big­ger bud­get and larg­er plat­form to work with, but oth­ers will see this as an idio­syn­crat­ic per­son­al­i­ty being sub­sumed by the slice of the block­buster world that most val­ues homogeneity.

All judge­ments will of course be reserved until we can actu­al­ly lay eyes on this movie, but in either case, it’s a touch dispir­it­ing to see the indie-to-fran­chise pipeline cours­ing with such clar­i­ty. Even if the Zatan­na movie turns out fine, as it very well could, admir­ers of Promis­ing Young Woman won’t be able to help won­der­ing what Fennell’s next orig­i­nal-con­cept pic­ture might look like.