Over a year after deciding to shelve the Batgirl movie starring Leslie Grace as the titular hero, current Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav says axing the planned movie took “real courage” but was a “necessary” move.
During the DealBook Summit event (via Variety), Zaslav explains that while it was by no means easy to come up with a “strategic decision,” choosing not to release the Batgirl project was the right thing to do.
“What content is going to help us win? The content that wasn’t, we made a strategic decision on. It was difficult and it was painful. But I think it was the right decision for the company and it was necessary,” said Zaslav.
Batgirl’s cancellation becomes one of Hollywood’s most controversial decisions
The sudden cancellation of Batgirl in 2022 has been deemed one of the most controversial moves in Hollywood thus far. With tax write-offs being the main reason behind the decision, the scrapping of Batgirl also led to other projects not seeing the light of day, including Coyote Vs. Acme and Scoob! Holiday Haunt.
Of course, given that Batgirl was nearly finished, the announcement created quite a stir online. But for Zaslav, canceling the mentioned projects was not entirely a bad thing.
“We decided that we had to have courage. The question is, should we take certain of these movies and open them in the theater and spend another $30 [million] or $40 million to promote them? When I look at the health of our company today, we needed to make those decisions. And it took real courage,” he added.
The future of Grace’s Batgirl remains obscure at this point considering the number of controversies the studio has been facing over the past year. Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah served as the project’s directors, based on a screenplay by The Flash and Birds of Prey writer Christina Hodson.
Some big names were also said to be involved in the canceled movie, including Michael Keaton, J. K. Simmons, Brendan Fraser, Jacob Scipio, Ivory Aquino, Ethan Kai, Rebecca Front, and Corey Johnson.
