‘Batgirl’ Cancelled By New Leadership At Warner Bros. Discovery

Fans and press reacted with shock this week when rumors surfaced that new Warner Bros. Discovery studio leadership are cancelling any release of the new Batgirl movie by filmmakers Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, and starring Leslie Grace in the title role (aka Barbara Gordon). It quickly became apparent the rumors are sadly true, and the film is the latest victim of broad cost-cutting and remaking of the studio’s future plans.

Leslie Grace stars in “Batgirl”

Source: Leslie Grace via Instagram

Batgirl was scheduled to release on HBO Max later this year, and previous executive heads had even considered a theatrical release for the project. Initially, I suspected the studio was merely shelving Batgirl until next year due to continuity issues that recently arose surrounding Batman in the DCEU. And for a brief moment, all signs seemed to logically point to this as what was really happening.

The Flash resets the status quo for DC films by replacing Ben Affleck’s version of the Caped Crusader with Michael Keaton’s incarnation. Keaton was supposed to continue in the role in Batgirl and in Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, but repeated production delays and other considerations forced WBD to shuffle release dates for several films.

As a result, The Flash now releases a few months after the Aquaman sequel in 2023. This led to the recent news that Affleck was returning one more time to portray Batman, since Keaton’s Batman won’t have been introduced into the DCEU yet. However, Batgirl — which is set after the events of The Flash and sees Keaton’s Bruce Wayne/Batman interacting with Commissioner Gordon and Batgirl from a different timeline than he’s used to — had so far remained on HBO Max’s 2022 slate.

Meaning it didn’t make sense for Batgirl to retain its release date, since it portrays events apparently taking place after Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom as well as The Flash. A Batgirl delay seemed inevitable, and I’d been waiting for them to announce it. So when the rumor broke this morning that the film had been cancelled, I suspected this was a misunderstanding about an imminent announcement of a delay.

However, I was also mindful Batgirl was written and produced as a streaming film with a lower budget than a typical theatrical superhero release, which contradicts the incoming owners’ and executive leaderships’ vision to refocus on theatrical productions over streaming, especially for the company’s biggest branded IP. So while my brain said, “take a breath, it’s probably the inevitable delay,” my gut was worried.

And within the hour, the rumors were confirmed — studio leadership decided Batgirl doesn’t feel cinematic enough to be given a theatrical release, and per President and CEO David Zaslav’s vision they are determined not to release major branded IP on the HBO Max streaming platform as lower-budgeted fare. So there are officially no plans to release Batgirl in its present form, and there are no plans or expectations that it will undergo the sort of extensive and expensive rewrites, reworks, and reshoots necessary to transform it into a theatrical production.

It sounds like the main ingredient is indeed scale and spectacle, as the studio seemed — and still seems — happy with the film’s creative team and their work. But Batgirl was made under a studio leadership and plan that explicitly prioritized a shift toward streaming and exploitation of major branded IP in exclusive streaming content. Which is literally the exact opposite of the desire and focus of the new leadership, who expressly oppose creation and release of big branded IP on the streaming service and who instead mandate a theatrical approach with major content brands.

Perhaps the studio will take a softer approach, without declaring outright that Batgirl will never see the light of day, as the press are currently reporting but which is frankly impossible to say right now. Facts and plans about DC properties change weekly, especially recently after the studio got new owners and new corporate leadership with a completely different overarching vision while waiting to hire someone to actually create and implement a brand new plan for the DC properties specifically.

So forgive me if I doubt there is truly any definitive choice being made today about the entire future fate of a movie featuring the Bat-family and starring the returning Michael Keaton as Batman, which can be delayed for at least a year before a decision really needs to be finalized, with room to break it up into a miniseries and just add a few million extra bucks to enhance the spectacle per episode, or to boost it enough to make it a good POVD release ahead of an HBO Max premiere down the road when the focus on theatrical perhaps lessens the restrictions on releasing occasional big branded IP on the streamer. Or any number of other alternative outcomes we could consider, with so much time before a decision even needs to be made.

Taking Batgirl off the slate and not committing to its fate is similar to the “have your cake and eat it too” position WBD finds itself in with The Flash — there is still plenty of time before they start promoting the film in earnest, there are currently no major contractual obligations between Miller and WBD beyond the completed films already on the release calendar, and there’s been no legal or narrative conclusion or definitive determination of all facts regarding Miller’s private life, so the studio is under no pressure to take a firm stand about any of the news reports regarding Ezra Miller, nor to make any definitive choices about altering The Flash or its release plans.

So I hope Warner takes a position closer to, “It’s cancelled for now, we’ll see what we decide to do with it once we’ve made some other choices and plans, but right now it’s simply off the release calendar.” Because that one incorporates the fact the film had to be delayed regardless, for continuity reasons, and that any number of things could happen or change in the next year, so there’s no reason to commit to anything today.

Meanwhile, fans should likewise take a breath and remember, whatever you hear today matters less than what you’ll hear tomorrow, and that’ll be just as true when tomorrow comes. No final determination of Batgirl’s fate can be expected today, because none can even be made by those in charge. With so many moving parts and so much change already underway, even the folks in charge can’t know for sure what any of this is definitely going to result in a year from now.

They surely feel Batgirl doesn’t conform to their desire for big-budget theatrical releases for big branded IP. Additionally, they don’t want to release lower-budgeted streaming productions of major branded IP when they’re committed to the reverse approach. And since it can’t be released this year for continuity reasons anyway, that made any other debate academic — Batgirl had to be cancelled, at least for now, and they don’t have enough information and commitments yet to make a final decision beyond that.

This also means it probably won’t be a priority to reconsider, since again there’s no imminent need to do so. Which tells me a year from now, they’ll have two likely big blockbuster hit DC superhero films in theaters — Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, and The Flash — and they’ll be sitting on a finished Batgirl movie featuring their newly minted and inevitably beloved Keaton Batman. And they will have the option to release it as “planned” (meaning after the resetting of the DCEU in The Flash), or release it on Blu-ray and PVOD, or spend $60+ million for rewrites and reshoots to elevate it to a theatrical level if possible. But eventually, I don’t see why they’d forego the opportunity to recoup expenses, if one presents itself. And I feel pretty sure one will.

So for now, there is no Batgirl movie anymore, and we don’t know if or when it will ever see the light of day. For now, there’s no plan to release it — but also technically no plan not to release it, either. It’s a victim of circumstance so far, and circumstances are always changing, so we have to wait and see what the next few months have in store, and anything we see and hear — including from official sources, to be blunt — has to be understood as inherently qualified by an endless array of “unless… but… as of now…”

I’ve personally been a big advocate of a Batgirl movie, and fans will remember I spent a few years banging the drum about Batgirl and Supergirl both being priority projects for the studio (while others insisted neither property was a priority and neither were likely to appear on screen any time soon), so I have obvious biases here and would love to see Batgirl released in some format. And I’m confident enough in DC properties to say I expect next year’s theatrical releases to provide the necessary context for Batgirl to get a reappraisal, and perhaps WBD will decide to put it back on HBO Max’s release schedule after all.