Filmmaker Kevin Smith is unhappy that Warner Bros. Studios decided to cancel “Batgirl” before it was ever released.
“It’s an incredibly bad look to cancel the Latina ‘Batgirl’ movie,” Smith said during an interview with Hollywood Babble-On, a show on YouTube.
“I don’t give a s*** if the movie was absolute f***ing dog s*** — I guarantee you that it wasn’t. The two directors [Bilall Fallah and Adil El Arbi] who directed that movie did a couple of episodes of ‘Ms. Marvel,’ and it was a wonderful f***ing show and they had more money to do ‘Batgirl’ than they had to do an episode of ‘Ms. Marvel’ and stuff.”
The studio announced on August 2 that it would not be releasing the film despite it costing $90 million to produce. “The decision to not release ‘Batgirl’ reflects our leadership’s strategic shift as it relates to the DC universe and HBO Max,” a Warner spokesperson stated at the time.
“Leslie Grace is an incredibly talented actor and this decision is not a reflection of her performance.”
The statement noted how grateful Warner Bros. was to the film’s directors and cast, and said “we hope to collaborate with everyone again in the near future.”
“I love all the CW shows, but the CW shows show their budgetary constraints,” Smith said during the interview. “They said ‘Batgirl’ looked too cheap because it was a $90 million movie. How do you make a cheap-looking $90 million movie? If it looked slightly better than an episode of ‘Arrow’ then why couldn’t we see that?”
“That is the baffling thing,” the “Clerks” director said during the interview.
“I don’t give a s*** how bad the ‘Batgirl’ movie is, nobody in that movie is complicated or has anything in their real life you have to market around. In ‘The Flash’ movie, we all know there’s a big problem! Flash is the Reverse-Flash in real life.”
‘Batgirl’ made headlines in January for adding a transgender woman, Ivory Aquino, to the cast as the best friend of Barbara Gordon/Batgirl (Grace). Rumor has it the movie is “irredeemable” and scored horribly during the testing phase, which caused executives to cancel the release altogether. Doing this allows studios to recoup some costs by filing an insurance claim.
According to reports, the “Batgirl” cancellation is one of the most expensive in Hollywood history.