Marvel reportedly eying Ava DuVernay to direct a superhero movie

Hold the phone. Hold. The. Goddamn. Phone. According to The Wrap, Marvel is in talks with director Ava DuVernay about helming one of the studio’s upcoming diverse superhero movies.

Of course, you know Ava DuVernay from a) directing the hell out of last year’s MLK biopic Selma and b) being snubbed by the Academy, despite directing the hell out of Selma.

TheWrap reports that the studio is eager to find an African-American talent to tackle Black Panther, a Chadwick Boseman-starring film adaptation featuring the first major black hero in comic book history, and a woman director for Captain Marvel, which will be the company’s first female-centered superhero flick. Those movies are due out in July and November 2018, respectively, and it’s unclear which of them DuVernay could be in the running for.

Patty Jenkins — Marvel’s original choice to direct Thor 2 — replaced Michelle MacLaren as the director of Warner Brothers’ Wonder Woman last month, but a woman has yet to helm a Marvel Universe film. Neither has a black director.

This is an industry-wide problem: in Hollywood, 90% of directors are men. Yesterday, the American Civil Liberties Union publicly called for a formal investigation into the practices of the major studios.

“Gender discrimination is illegal. And, really, Hollywood doesn’t get this free pass when it comes to civil rights and gender discrimination,” Melissa Goodman, director of the L.G.B.T., Gender and Reproductive Justice Project at the A.C.L.U. of Southern California, told the New York Times, presumably dropping the mic as she finished that sentence.

Molly Fitzpatrick is senior editor of Fusion’s Pop & Culture section. Her interests include movies about movies, TV shows about TV shows, and movies about TV shows, but not so much TV shows about movies.