Filming has officially kicked off on Batgirl. On Instagram, the movie’s directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah shared an image from the set revealing a slate with the Batgirl logo accompanied by a nameplate that reads, “Officer Barbara Gordon.” The location is tagged as Gotham City, presumably at the city’s police department building, and the caption reads, “Day one of Batgirl!!!” You can see the post below.

Leslie Grace stars as Barbara Gordon in Batgirl. She is the daughter of Commissioner James Gordon, and it has also been reported that J.K. Simmons will return to reprise that role for this new movie. The actor has also suggested that the elder Gordon’s role in Batgirl will be rather substantial, especially in consideration to the limited screen time he had in Justice League. As he told Josh Horowitz on the Happy, Sad, Confused podcast, Simmons will start his work on the movie in the new year.

“I was completely flabbergasted they came back to me recently and wanted me to be Commissioner Gordon again and have it be a more significant role,” Simmons said. “I’m looking forward to it. I think I’m going to get on the horn to [Leslie Grace] and the directors in the next couple of days and do little preliminary rehearsals. They start very soon and I jump on board sometime in January in Glasgow which is a wonderful place to shoot it as it’s Gothic. I’m excited to be the once and future Jim Gordon.”

He added, “I had a long discussion with the guys about how we want to portray him. And the script, I thought ... I just don't want to give away anything at all, so I'm not gonna talk about the structure of it or any of that, but I thought it was a really interesting take on introducing Batgirl and giving Jim Gordon, fleshing him out certainly more than I had a chance to do in my first foray into that."

It’s also been reported that internet darling Brendan Fraser has joined the cast in a villain role, and the rumor is that he’ll be playing the supervillain Firefly. Bad Boys for Life star Jacob Scipio has also joined the cast in a mystery role. Details on the story, which comes from a screenplay penned by Christina Hodson (Birds of Prey, The Flash), haven’t been revealed, though J.K. Simmons’ return seems to confirm that Batgirl is set in the DCEU.

If this is a DCEU movie, would that mean that Ben Affleck’s Bruce Wayne is the Batman in the Batgirl movie? And if that’s the case, is there any chance he could make an appearance? There’s no word at this time of Affleck coming back for Batgirl, as it was last reported that he’d end his run in the role in the upcoming movie The Flash. Of course, Bruce Wayne doesn’t necessarily need to be featured in a solo Batgirl movie, though there would seemingly be some references or some kind of acknowledgment of the Dark Knight.

The plan is reportedly for Batgirl to debut exclusively on HBO Max in 2022. The fan art above comes to us from Zygrohan on Instagram.