The DC film Batgirl, which was slated to air on HBO Max later this year, has been shelved.
According to The Wrap, Warner Bros. Discovery will no longer be releasing the Leslie Grace-starring movie. The movie was directed by Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, who previously did a fantastic job on Ms. Marvel and Bad Boys for Life. The project’s budget, which reportedly increased from $70-80 million to $90 million as a result of COVID-19 regulations, has already finished filming when the news is made.
After hanging up the cape for many years, Michael Keaton was supposed to reprise his role as Batman, which he would also perform in The Flash. That film has not been abandoned despite the claims and several arrests made against its actor, Ezra Miller.
According to an insider, Warner Bros. CEO David Zaslav believed Batgirl “simply did not work,” adding that the decision had nothing to do with the cast or directors. Deadline adds the decision “falls in line with the mandate put down by the new WB regime to cut back on the feature films premiering on the streamer and deciding which films will be released theatrically and which will be shelve.” That story’s writer, Justin Kroll, subsequently tweeted that a “rival studio exec” was “floored” by the development and said they’d “worked in this town for three decades and this is some unprecedented shit right here.”
It seems that Warner Bros. decided what would happen to Batgirl since it wanted to focused on theatrical releases rather than producing films for HBO Max. The company abandoned the movie following test screenings, according to an insider who spoke to the New York Post, because “Batgirl is going to be irredeemable.”