DC Films President Reportedly Ready to Exit After Batgirl Movie Cancellation

DC Films President Walter Hamada is reportedly on the brink of exiting the studio, following the decision to shelve the Batgirl movie that was coming to HBO Max. According to the latest reports, Hamada has already started moving toward the exit door, and has gone as far as consulting with counsel, according to sources. It is being said that for now, Hamada will stay in his post through late October, when Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s big DC movie Black Adam hits theaters. But after that… 

As THR’s one source claims, Hamada is staking out an exit route, but he’s not fully committing to that course of action, just yet. He’s pausing,” the source said. “The decision has not been made to make this adversarial, yet.”

Hamada was brought in to head DC Films after the very messy attempt to launch a proper franchise universe with Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Suicide Squad, and Justice League, Hamada was supposed to transition the franchise out of the era of filmmaker Zack Snyder’s influence (or “SnyderVerse”) and into a new plan, which would’ve seen DC embrace a multiverse view of its franchise, with films as varied as Todd Philips’ Joker movie franchise, Kaley Cuoco’s Harley Quinn adult animated series, and James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad, while core shared universe would’ve still been carried by films like Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman movies, Jason Momoa’s Aquaman, and Ezra Miller’s Flash. It was an ambitious approach that would’ve also utilized the new streaming service avenue in coordination with theatrical releases, with The Suicide Squad, its spinoff TV series Peacemaker, and Batgirl all being premium DC content that would be premiering on HBO Max. 

However, now that DC Film and Warner Bros. are under the Warner Bros. Discovery banner lead by Discovery chief David Zaslav, there’s been a quick and drastic turnaround in approach to how the DC franchise will be built. Zaslav reportedly wants a complete reset of DC strategy, and has laid out a 10-year plan to make DC a proper rival for Marvel Studios and its Marvel Cinematic Universe:

“We think we can build a much stronger, sustainable growth business out of DC,” Zaslav said in a meeting this week. “As part of that, we are going to focus on quality. We are not going to release any film before it’s ready … DC is something we can make better.”

One of those moves to make DC “better” was apparently shelving Batgirl – a film seen as not strong enough for theaters, but overly costly to reap benefit from a streaming-only release (better as a write-off) . Walter Hamada was apparently very upset that such drastic moves were being made without his council. Now, it doesn’t seem like he will be hanging around to help Zaslav’s vision for DC come to fruition…