DC Co-Chairmen and CEOs Peter Safran and James Gunn were asked to speak about the recently axed Batgirl situation yesterday at their slate unveiling for the comic book studio.
The Leslie Grace-Michael Keaton-Brendan Fraser starring film, which originally was going to be released on HBO Max, cost around $70M. After one test screening, which allegedly had the same score as It, the Zaslav-run Warner Discovery pulled the plug on the film since they considered it sunk cost and decided to use it as a tax write-off.
It should be pointed out that all unfinished films are unreleasable simply by being unfinished. Interestingly Batgirl didn’t have any VFX, unlike most of the DCEU’s outings. From what has been revealed since Batgirl’s cancellation, the film would have potentially impacted the greater universe storyline mapped out with Flash, which also stars Keaton as Batman and is expected to reboot the whole DC-verse after a very tumultuous production. After the film was canceled, the footage the filmmakers shot went completely missing from their servers.
According to Deadline, Safran said of the situation, “I saw the movie, There are a lot of incredibly talented people in front of and behind the camera in that film, but that was not releasable. It happens sometimes.” He elaborated, “I think it was not an easy decision, but they made the right decision by shelving it,” emphasized Safran, noting, “Batgirl is inevitably a character we’ll include in our story.”
Co-directors El Arbi and Fallah have moved on from working with DC. Sony announced the duo was returning and going into pre-production on the fourth Bad Boys movie with Will Smith and Martin Lawrence after their previous collaboration was a smash hit, grossing over $426M world wide.
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