Credit: NY Times/Warner Bros Discovery, edited by ITMDavid Zaslav, the CEO of Warner Bros., is doubling down on the controversial cancelation of the Batgirl movie and says it took “courage” for him to shelve a hotly anticipated Max film.
Infamously, the studio produced a solo Batgirl movie several years ago that was intended for streaming release on HBO Max. The film was to star Leslie Grace as Barbara Gordon, AKA Batgirl, in the character’s first feature film ever and was part of the now nearly-defunct DC Extended Universe formerly led by Zack Snyder.
The movie would have seen the return of J.K. Simmons as Jim Gordon, the police commissioner of Gotham City and Batgirl’s father, as well as Brendan Fraser in a rare villainous turn, fresh off his recent Academy Award win. To the excitement of many fans, Batgirl would have also featured Michael Keaton, reprising the role of Batman that he had originally begun in the 1989 Tim Burton film.
Batgirl was directed by Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah and written by Christina Hodson and was reportedly well into post-production when the studio abruptly announced that it would not release the film, ever. The near-complete film was shelved by the company, which claimed that the movie was simply not good enough to be released.
Related: Warner Bros. Discovery Backs Down, Will Not “Cancel” ‘Looney Tunes’
On the other hand, Warner Bros. did release The Flash, a DCEU movie that was savaged by critics and became one of the biggest box office bombs of all time.
While Warner Bros. and David Zaslav never explicitly said so, it is commonly believed that Batgirl was shelved in order to take advantage of a tax loophole in which corporations can “write-off” film projects on which they took a loss. The budget for Batgirl is estimated to have been some $90 million, and, by canceling the movie and thus seeing no revenue from it, the studio could save $90 million in taxes.
This cost-cutting usage of the tax code outraged DC fans and has since prompted congressional action into exactly why media companies were being rewarded for not creating content. However, according to David Zaslav, canceling Batgirl was actually an act of deep courage and a vital necessity for the financial health of the company.
The Warner Bros. CEO recently spoke at The New York Times’ DealBook conference (per Deadline) and confirmed that he had no regrets about canceling Batgirl and numerous other projects, saying, “We’re at a very hard time that requires hard decisions, and many of them are unpopular…so we really decided that we have to have courage, we’ve got to figure it out.”
Related: Batgirl Star Hints the Canceled Movie Could Be Released “One Day”
According to David Zaslav, canceling movies like Batgirl, Scoob! Holiday Haunt, and Coyote vs. Acme were tough decisions to be made for the good of Warner Bros. and not as simple as Hollywood accounting. He continued, “If we produce a show, a $100-million movie…We’ve spent the $100 million dollars and if we don’t release it. It’s gone. We don’t have any real benefit from it. The question is, should we take certain of these movies and open them in the theater and spend another $30 or $40 million to promote them? And Warner Brothers team and HBO made a number of decisions. They were hard. But when I look at the health of our company today, we needed to make those decisions. And it took real courage.”
The Warner Bros. CEO really seems to be doubling down on the courage aspect of canceling projects, especially considering how unpopular his ruthless cost-cutting methods have made him with the general public. Zaslav seems to feel it is his job to save the company money at any cost. Perhaps it is worth noting that, the year before the Batgirl movie was canceled, Zaslav received an unprecedented compensation package of $203 million, largely in WB stock.
But, true, it is important to cut costs.
Do you think David Zaslav was courageous to cancel near-complete movies like Batgirl? Give us your opinion in the comments below!