DC Studios has its Supergirl.
Milly Alcock, who played the young Rhaenyra Targaryen in the first season of HBO’s “House of the Dragon,” will play the Woman of Steel in the new DC Universe spearheaded by James Gunn and Peter Safran. She will headline the upcoming feature film “Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow,” based on the DC comics run of the same name by Tom King and Bilquis Evely.
That project, however, does not yet have a director, and Ana Nogueira (“The Vampire Diaries”) was just hired to write the screenplay in November. Gunn, who confirmed Alcock’s casting on Instagram, has not stated when Alcock will make her superhero debut. But the fact that the news that Alcock landed the role broke months before Gunn will begin shooting “Superman: Legacy” suggests that Supergirl may first show up alongside her Kryptonian cousin before setting off on her own story.
The Australian-born Alcock started her acting career as a teenager on Aussie TV, before she was cast in her breakout role on HBO’s “Game of Thrones” prequel series. Alcock won wide acclaim for her performance as the striving Targaryen princess in the first five episodes of the show, before she ceded the role to Emma D’Arcy after the show jumped forward in time 10 years.
Alcock will be in good company, as Supergirl — aka Kara Zor-El — has been played several times in just the last few years, including by Melissa Benoist on the CBS and CW series “Supergirl” (which ran for six seasons), and by Sasha Calle in the 2023 feature film “The Flash,” one of the final films in the previous iteration of the DC cinematic universe. Gunn has made clear, however, that he wants a fresh start with the new DCU.
In the 2022 comic book run of “Woman of Tomorrow,” rather than escape the planet of Krypton as an infant before it explodes (like her cousin Kal-El), Kara grows up witnessing her home planet’s destruction until she’s 14, when she arrives on Earth. That makes the character “much more hardcore,” Gunn explained in 2023 when presenting the first 10 titles in the new DCU slate. “She’s not exactly the Supergirl we’re used to seeing.”
