Warner Bros. and HBO have made a lot of questionable decisions in the last few years, and the entire abandonment of Batgirl is one that audiences are still reeling over. While there are many reasons to resent Warner Bros. for the decision, Brendan Fraser, who starred as Firefly in the project, thinks the worst part about the situation is that canceling the movie has robbed fans of an inspiring female hero. Leslie Grace played Barbara Gordon / Batgirl in the movie, with the cast also including J.K. Simmons as James Gordon and Michael Keaton reprising his role of Batman. Batgirl was directed by Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah.
While speaking with the Associated Press, Fraser reflected on Batgirl, and explained:
“A whole movie [was scrapped]. 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.”
Development on Batgirl started in 2017, was filmed in 2021-2022, and was announced in August 2022 to be canceled while in the post-production phase.
What Happened With ‘Batgirl’?
To say that the state of DC films has been tumultuous over the past decade would be a bit of an understatement. In 2017, Justice League was set to be the movie event of the year, finally uniting Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman in a live-action movie. Director Zack Snyder left the movie before production completed due to a family tragedy, resulting in Joss Whedon coming in to finish production and helm reshoots, ultimately making a picture that felt entirely cobbled together, disappointing audiences and critics alike.
Rather than start over, though, Warner Bros. struggled with which elements of this franchise to keep and what to abandon. Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and Shazam! were hits, but their sequels fell flat, as did The Flash and Black Adam. During this period, Warner Bros. was also debuting its streaming service HBO Max, while the world was also struggling through the coronavirus pandemic.
Batgirl was officially announced in 2021 as a movie on DC’s slate, though it was developed as a project for HBO Max to drive subscribers to the platform. Between 2020 and 2022, a number of highly anticipated movies and TV series in various stages of development were scrapped or reimagined, though between the anticipation of Batgirl and the fact that it had wrapped filming is what made its cancellation such a surprise. Comic fans are used to titles being announced and delayed indefinitely, or movies pivoting from theatrical to streaming releases, but an entire movie being filmed and coming close to completion, only to essentially be deleted, is something DC fans are still coping with.
Making things more surprising, Zack Snyder spent years talking about his version of Justice League still existing, and after years of campaigning, Zack Snyder’s Justice League debuted on HBO Max. Batgirl directors Adil and Bilall have cast doubt on the film ever being released, essentially claiming their film suffered what equates to being “deleted” entirely.