It’s been a whirlwind journey for the DC film universe over the past decade, and after the rocky ending of the previous connected universe, things are looking up in a major way with the first few successes of the new DC universe from James Gunn and Peter Safran. Sadly, we didn’t even get to see all of the previous era’s DC projects, as one anticipated film was shot entirely but scrapped by the studio, and now one of that film’s key stars has explained what the real tragedy of the whole situation actually is.
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For those who don’t remember, back in 2022, Warner Bros. Discovery made the shocking decision to shelve the completed Batgirl film in order to save money via a tax write-off. Leslie Grace starred as Batgirl in the film, and Brendan Fraser starred as the villain Firefly. In a new interview with The AP, Fraser discussed the film and the tragedy of a generation of little girls missing out on an amazing heroine to look up to because it was more valuable to the studio to burn the film down.
When the concept of shelving a completed Batgirl film and how it reflected the state of the industry was brought up, Fraser said, “A whole movie. I mean, there were four floors of production in Glasgow. I was sneaking into the art department just to geek out. The tragedy of that is that there’s a generation of little girls who don’t have a heroine to look up to and go, ‘She looks like me.’ I mean, Michael Keaton came back as Batman. The Batman!”
“The product — I’m sorry, ‘content’ — is being commodified to the extent that it’s more valuable to burn it down and get the insurance on it than to give it a shot in the marketplace. I mean, with respect, we could blight itself,” Fraser said.
Batgirl was green-lit in a different era of Warner Bros in terms of the plan and approach to streaming, and was set to be a tentpole of multiple films that were going straight to streaming on HBO Max. That all changed when David Zaslav took over, and the main goal became pivoting away from that all-in streaming strategy and cutting down on the company’s massive debt.
Batgirl ended up being used as a Tax Write-off, and reports stated that the film had cost around $90 million after delays due to the COVID pandemic, with the write-off saving the studio around $15 to $20 million. If that’s the case, it could have likely made around that in theaters if the studio had just released it, and here’s where there is a bit of a conflict about the film.
At one point, Safran made a rather bold statement about the quality of the film, as he had seen the movie but said that it was “not releasable” (via IndieWire). Safran would go on to say that “it would not have been able to compete in the theatrical marketplace. It was built for the small screen”. Those statements don’t match up with what other sources have said about the quality not being a part of the decision to shelve it, and talent from the project, including Fraser, seem to think it would have been fine if it had been released and given a chance to find an audience. Frankly, there’s simply no way Batgirl is worse than The Flash, and that film got a full theatrical rollout.
Unfortunately, at this point, it seems that fans won’t end up ever seeing the film, even though the studio did end up reversing its decision on the other write-off film, Coyote vs. Acme. The studio would work out a deal with Ketchup Entertainment to release it, but that doesn’t seem in the cards for Batgirl.
It would be great if a future Batgirl-focused film has Grace and Fraser involved, but we’ll just have to wait and see what happens with the character and the cast moving forward.
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