Mary Holland Lands Female Lead in DC’s Jimmy Olsen Spinoff

Mary Holland has been cast as the female lead in HBO Max’s upcoming DC series centered on Jimmy Olsen, sources close to production tell Deadline. The Ghosts and The Little House on the Prairie actress will play Sandra, a character whose full details are being kept under wraps.

The project, which hails from DC Studios, remains unofficially greenlit and has no premiere date set. Holland joins a cast that includes Skyler Gisondo, reprising his role as Jimmy Olsen from James Gunn’s summer blockbuster Superman.

Jimmy Tatro was confirmed last month as Gorilla Grodd — the hyper-intelligent, telepathic ape villain who has frequently clashed with the Flash. Season 1 of the series will center on Grodd, exploring his origins and his psychic abilities after an encounter with an alien spaceship.

“The series is described as a true-crime docuseries and mockumentary, with Jimmy Olsen hosting investigations into DC’s rogues’ gallery from the newsroom of the Daily Planet.”

The format is inspired by the satirical tone of American Vandal, the Netflix true-crime parody that ran from 2017 to 2018. Its creators, Tony Yacenda and Dan Perrault, are attached as writers, executive producers, and showrunners.

James Gunn and Peter Safran, co-heads of DC Studios, will executive produce alongside Galen Vaisman.

Warner Bros. Television is also producing. While the project has been rumored to carry titles such as DC Crime or American Villain, HBO Max and DC Studios declined to comment for this story.

The crime-mystery-comedy anthology is envisioned as a spinoff of Gunn’s Superman films, with each season potentially focusing on a different supervillain. The Grodd arc will also serve as an introduction to several other DC Comics metahuman characters.

Holland is an actress, writer, and comedian who currently recurs on CBS’s hit sitcom Ghosts and appears in Netflix’s The Little House on the Prairie reboot. Her previous television work includes Apple’s The Big Door Prize and Netflix’s Woman in the House opposite Kristen Bell.

Her film credits include Under the Lights alongside Nick Offerman, Annapurna’s Nightbitch, Neon’s Self Reliance, and Senior Year. She is currently in production on The Earliest Show, a TV series from Amplify Pictures.

Her casting as Sandra marks a significant addition to a project that aims to blend DC’s superhero mythology with a grounded, documentary-style approach. The series is still in development, and no additional casting announcements have been made.

Sources

• Deadline