Margot Robbie has tapped Miles Joris-Peyrafitte to direct a Tank Girl movie she’s producing via her LuckyChap Entertainment banner. Alan Martin, who co-created Tank Girl with Jamie Hewlett in the late 80s, tweeted earlier this week that Robbie’s production company had optioned the rights to his comic, a cult favourite.
The comic follows a tank operator who travels around a post-apocalyptic hellscape doing odd jobs and getting into strange trouble. The character shares a similar punk-rock attitude and knack for creating chaos with Robbie’s Harley Quinn, although that’s where the comparisons end.
Sources say the film may find Tank Girl teaming with a fellow outlaw named Jet Girl and a group of rebels to rise up and destroy a tyrannical government that has seized control of the already scarce water supply. Take that with a grain of salt, though.
The project is being developed as a star vehicle for Robbie, but it’s still in very early development. Producers are still waiting on a script, and Robbie won’t commit to star until she has read it.
Tank Girl has already been adapted once in 1995. That version starred Lori Petty and was directed by Rachel Talalay. It itself has become a sort of cult hit, and Talalay is now regarded as one of the trailblazing female directors who paved the way for other women in the action genre.
Joris-Peyrafitte has already worked with Robbie before on the indie Dreamland, which she produced and starred in. He made his directorial debut with the 2016 suburban drama As You Are, which starred Amandla Stenberg and Charlie Heaton.
He hasn’t got a lot of action experience, but he did recently sign on to write and direct The Hunter & The Fox for Annapurna, which has been described as a “Kubrickian” horror-thriller of sorts.
It’s lucky for Robbie that Tank Girl is still in very early production, as she’s got a heap of projects lined up. She’s got Cathy Yan‘s Birds Of Prey and the Fox News drama Bombshell lined up for next year.
She’ll soon begin filming James Gunn‘s The Suicide Squad, while she’s also a producer on the Carey Mulligan thriller Promising Young Woman.
Obviously with no script ready yet, the Tank Girl movie is a long way from happening. But it’s good to see Robbie using her star power to help bring something weird and interesting back to the big screen.
#Peace.Love.TankGirl
