After working together on Dreamland, Margot Robbie has tapped Miles Joris-Peyrafitte to direct a Tank Girl movie that she'll produce via her LuckyChap Entertainment banner, Collider has exclusively learned.
On Monday, Alan Martin, who co-created Tank Girl with Jamie Hewlett back in the late '80s, tweeted that Robbie’s production company, LuckyChap Entertainment, had optioned the rights to his comic, which is a cult favorite.
It's my understanding that the project will be developed as a starring vehicle for Robbie, who will produce with her LuckyChap partners Tom Ackerley and Josey McNamara. The project, however, is in early development, as the producers are still waiting for a script, and Robbie won't commit to star until she reads it.
“Just heard that Margot Robbie’s company have optioned rights from MGM to make a new Tank Girl movie – now several months into development. We haven’t been contacted by any of the parties involved with the project, so not sure if there will be any input from the original creators.” A representative for MGM did not respond to a request for comment.
Created in 1988, Tank Girl follows a tank operator with a mostly-shaved head who travels around a post-apocalyptic hellscape doing odd jobs and getting into trouble. From a visual standpoint, the character couldn't be more different than Robbie's Harley Quinn, though the characters certainly share a similar punk-rock attitude and knack for creating chaos.
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.
Tank Girl was previously turned into a 1995 film starring Lori Petty and directed by Rachel Talalay, one of several female directors who paved the way in the action genre and, regardless of how you feel about Tank Girl, deserves more credit for being a trailblazer.
Joris-Peyrafitte made his directorial debut with the 2016 indie drama As You Are starring Amandla Stenberg and Charlie Heaton before going on to direct the well-reviewed indie Dreamland, which Robbie produced and starred in alongside Travis Fimmel and Garrett Hedlund. The filmmaker recently signed on to write and direct The Hunter & the Fox for Annapurna, and that project has been described as an "elevated Kubrickian-type horror-thriller."
Robbie recently starred in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and she next stars in the Fox News drama Bombshell, as well as Cathy Yan's Birds of Prey movie. She'll soon begin filming James Gunn's Suicide Squad sequel, and the Oscar-nominated actress is also a producer on the Carey Mulligan thriller Promising Young Woman, which does indeed sound promising.
Joris-Peyrafitte is represented by WME, Grandview, and Hansen, Jacobson, Teller, while Robbie is repped by CAA, Management 360, Aran Michael Management and Jackoway Austen.
