About three weeks ago, many of us were stunned when we heard the news that the people at Warner Bros. had decided to cancel the ‘Batgirl’ movie out of hand. An especially surprising decision if we take into account that it came after the completion of filming and, more importantly, after a disbursement of 90 million dollars.
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Since then, much has been speculated about the reasons that have moved the company to get rid of the DC feature film for HBO Max. The most solid, however shocking it may seem, is the economic one; and it is that finishing the post-production process and premiering the tape would have meant a budget extra and a tax burden that the studio was unwilling to deal with.
However, it has always been the doubt about the final quality of the product as an excuse for its defenestration. A theory that the directors of ‘Batgirl’ Bilall Fallah and Adil El Arbi have denied in an interview with the French medium Skript.
“The guys at Warner Bros. told us it wasn’t a talent issue on our part or the actress’s part. [Leslie Grace], not even the quality of the film. We were in the middle of mounting. There was a lot of work to do, so it’s not like the movie was finished. Warner Bros. told us that the cancellation was a strategic change, a management change so they could save a few bucks.”
With the mystery finally resolved by those most responsible and with ‘Batgirl’ wiped off the map, there were many of us who remembered the ‘Deadpool’ case and still had the hope of, at least, be able to take a look at the material shot. But this illusion has been shattered by Fallah.
The director has said that his first impulse after hearing the news was to try to save some of the material on his phone, but when it arrived, he didn’t there was a trace of the footage.
“No, we don’t have anything. Adil called me and said, ‘Run! Record everything with your phone!’ I went to the server… Everything was gone. We were like, ‘Fucking shit!’ We couldn’t even keep the scenes with Batman.”
It seems that the only thing left is turn the page as far as ‘Batgirl’ is concerned and continue to witness how the people of Warner continue to remove series and movies from the HBO Max catalog, or plan to sell their animated productions to other streaming platforms.