For anyone wanting to see a woman in a leading role of a big summer blockbuster, 2013 was a particularly depressing year that left you with either Lois Lane and Faora in Man of Steel or Mako in Pacific Rim, all of whom played second fiddle to male co-stars. Better days may be on the way, however, with the news that the Queen & Country movie appears to be alive again -- and, even better, Ellen Page is in reportedly in talks for the lead role.
For those unfamiliar with Queen & Country, it's a spy series created by novelist and comic book writer Greg Rucka centered around Tara Chace, a operative of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service. Appropriately, given Rucka's dual career, it's a series that has encompassed both comics -- Queen & Country ran from 2001 through 2007, published by Oni Press and illustrated by a whole host of artists, including Daredevil's Chris Samnee and *Finder'*s Carla Speed McNeil -- and prose, with the series' most recent entry being in the form of The Last Run, a novel published in 2010.
That the X-Men: Days of Future Past star is negotiating to play Chace isn't a sign that we'll definitely be watching a Queen & Country movie in a couple of years, of course, despite reports talking about 20th Century Fox considering the project a potential franchise that "could do for Page what the Jason Bourne franchise did to lift Matt Damon’s profile." There's also no guarantee that any eventual Queen & Country movie would be any good, as anyone who remembers the last movie adaptation of a Rucka-created property -- 2009's appalling Whiteout, which memorably only scored 7 percent on Rotten Tomatoes -- can sadly attest to.
Nonetheless, this news should be seen as a good thing. At the very least, it suggests that Fox is looking for a female-led action movie franchise after this summer of non-stop machismo action, and in the best case scenario, we'll get Page in a movie that matches the original source material in smarts, action and intrigue. As Rucka himself noted on Twitter today, it's "early days yet" but he's "keeping all appendages appropriately crossed!" (You should too.) And other studios? Maybe you should take this as a sign that you should be trying a little harder.
