Ready for action with ‘Bumblebee’
— Christina Hodson, screenwriter
Movie-mad “Bumblebee” screenwriter Christina Hodson returns on more than one occasion to the subject of Linda Hamilton’s awesomeness in “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” as we chat over tea and scones made from scratch in her Los Angeles home.
And who among the Sarah Connor-worshipping faithful can blame her? Hodson’s lifelong love of film turned into a career when she took a leap and penned her first script just seven years ago: “In my heart,” she smiles, “I always wanted to write ‘T2.’ ”
The London native grew up a fanatic for action movies and wearing out her VHS collection, gravitating toward the big explosions, bombastic set pieces and epic emotions of American big-budget blockbusters — exactly the kind of movies she’s now making her specialty as a new voice in Hollywood.
In 2011, she switched tracks from a career in development to screenwriting. Within a few years, she was hired to reboot “The Fugitive” for Warner Bros., which led to her working in the diverse “Transformers” writers room assembled to spark new directions for the Hasbro franchise.
Emerging with the script for “Bumblebee,” an origin tale that tracks the fanfavorite Autobot as he’s befriended by a teen named Charlie (Hailee Steinfeld) in the 1980s, Hodson is the first woman to originate and write a film in the “Transformers” franchise.
Lorenzo di Bonaventura, the producer who has shepherded the property through four sequels and a
“I want my nieces to grow up in a world where the girls and women they see on screen feel as varied and complicated as they are.”
prequel following 2007’s $709 million worldwide grosser “Transformers,” hopes “Bumblebee,” which opens Dec. 21, will inaugurate a new constellation of spinoffs.
“The audience was telling us that they wanted to go in-depth on a character,” he said, explaining that Bumblebee was a hero fans already felt connected to. “But we were also interested in changing the rhythm of the franchise.”
The result is a scaleddown, more intimate “Transformers” action pic about a girl and her robot, featuring the kind of defiantly independent heroine who rarely gets to lead big studio blockbusters. (Kelly Fremon Craig also contributed scripting duties.)
Perhaps even more intriguing for the comic book hardcore: Hodson is prepping for a production start on the Harley Quinn “Birds of Prey” spinoff starring Margot Robbie, which she wrote and Cathy Yan will direct. And she’s writing a stand-alone “Batgirl” movie.
“Mostly, I want my nieces to grow up in a world where the girls and women they see on-screen feel as varied and complicated as they are,” Hodson said of her approach to writing characters.
Her rise has made Hodson not only one of the most in-demand screenwriters in town, but also among the small but growing ranks of strong female voices working in the multibillion-dollar blockbuster business historically dominated by men.
“Particularly, as women, we feel like we need permission to be writing the bigger movies — and it is hard breaking into that space,” Hodson said. “It’s lovely that we all know each other, but I would love it if there were so many of us that we can’t know each other.”