Move over, Plastic Man: Here comes Plastic Woman

The ongoing Plastic Man movie tease continues, but this time with a twist: The man in question might be a woman.

Entertainment industry newspaper Variety reported on Dec. 4 that Warner Bros. and DC Films have hired writer Cat Vasko to write a Plastic Man movie as "a female-led action adventure." Other online sources have taken this to mean the title character will be a woman instead of a man.

The Variety article also said that DC execs Walter Hamada and Chantal Nong "are overseeing for the studio as it shifts the focus of the two-year-old project." That's a reference to the December 2018 announcement that a Plastic Man movie was in development, with screenwriter Amanda Idoko writing a "comedic, action-driven script."

When contacted by Plastics News this week, a DC Comics rep only said that the project was in "early development."

Vasko's comics-adjacent credits include working with Margot Robbie — who's played DC character Harley Quinn in two films — and an adaptation of the popular comic Lumberjanes.

If Plastic Man is cast as a woman, the main pop culture comparison would be to Elastigirl, a stretching character in the wonderful Incredibles movies from Pixar. Holly Hunter has done a great job voicing that character and her secret identity of Helen Parr. The first Incredibles film in 2004 and its 2018 sequel generated combined box office revenue of almost $2 billion. They're some of my family's favorite superhero movies.

Another stretching superheroine debuted in 2014, when Marvel Comics introduced a new version of their Ms. Marvel character, a teenage girl with stretching powers. That character's secret identity was Kamala Khan, who became Marvel's first Muslim character to have her own series.

A quick refresher: Plastic Man was created by Jack Cole in 1941 and has been in and out of the pop culture spotlight for more than 70 years. His biggest exposure likely was in a late 1970s Saturday morning cartoon. DC has owned the rights to the character since the 1950s.

Plastic Man began life as criminal Eel O'Brian, then gained stretching and shape-shifting powers after falling into a vat of chemicals during a robbery attempt. He turned away from his previous life and used these powers to fight crime. More recently, Plastic Man was a member of a DC superhero team called the Teriffics.

Rumors of a Plastic Man movie go back to the early 2010s, when the Wachowskis — who wrote The Matrix — were said to be working on a script. More recently in 2016, nerd movie legend Kevin Smith (Clerks, Mallrats, etc.) was linked to a Plastic Man project.

Will a Plastic Man movie finally happen this time? Or is the rumored gender swap just a cry for attention in a media-saturated world? Is this latest story just another example of the endless challenges of 2020?

Time will tell. I'm sticking to my title for such a movie, with a little adjustment — Plastic Woman: Polywood Nights. How long is an Oscar acceptance speech supposed to be?