Batgirl directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah reportedly tried to save the shelved film using his smartphone. Warner Bros. made a shocking move when they recently cancelled the nearly $90 million film Batgirl. After the film was stuck in development hell for years, they finally finished filming this year. But apparently, Batgirl was so bad that the studio just cut their losses and shelved the whole project. Warner Bros. has seemingly been in turmoil since with the studio calling a “reset” on the DCEU (DC Extended Universe).
Although Warner Bros. is shaking things up with DC Films, they are still going ahead with the Dwayne Johnson film Black Adam and the Zachary Levi led Shazam! Fury of the Gods. According to reports, things were so bad at Warner Bros. that DC Films President Walter Hamada almost quit because of the decision to shelve Batgirl. Hamada agreed to stay on until the release of Black Adam on October 21st, 2022. Since the merger of Discovery and Warner Bros. several DC Films projects have slowed production or straight up been canceled. Warner Bros. Discovery said that they are going to overhaul their DC film strategy, but who knows what might emerge out of all this chaos.
In a recent interview with Skript, Batgirl’s directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah claimed they tried to save the movie using their smartphones. The interview was translated from French, but they claim that Warner Bros. scrubbed all the footage they had filmed of the movie. They also go on to say that Warner Bros. decision was ” a strategic change, a shifting in management so they could save some bucks.” This may be the case, but it conflicts with other reports that claim the movie was too bad to release. Furthermore, the directors explain that the film was done shooting, but it was no where near completed. You can see the full interview and excerpt below:
“No, we have nothing. Adil called and told me, ‘Go ahead! Shoot everything on your phone!’ I went on the server… Everything was gone. We were [like]… ‘F**ing shit!’… We did not [even] keep [the scenes] with Batman in it.”
This new interview changes my perspective on the whole Batgirl issue. If the movie wasn’t terrible, and it was Warner Bros. just trying to save a few bucks, then they made an awful mistake. Lets not forget, they scrubbed a $90 million movie with a Latina lead. And apparently, they did this out of greed. The optics on this situation just got a whole lot worse. I can see if the movie was irredeemable, but to shelve a movie for no good reason is ridiculous. Moreover, it just seems like DC Films is in a nosedive. If Black Adam and Shazam! Fury of the Gods don’t deliver like they want we could see things go from bad to worse. Hopefully that is not the case and Warner Bros. and DC Films gets their act together because things seem chaotic right now.
Source: Skript
