Warner Bros’ decision to scrap DC film Batgirl despite a history of releasing duds exposes full scale of $100 million farce

Warner Bros’ reasons for scrapping a $100 million film that was already near completion are looking more dubious by the day.

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This week the news broke that Warner Bros had “shelved” the upcoming comic book film Batgirl.

The surprise move means the $100 million movie, which had already been filmed, will never be released on streaming services as previously planned.

Initial reports suggested the problem was the film’s quality - supposedly, it was so bad that it had been declared “irredeemable”.

Subsequent reports have suggested the studio actually ditched it for cynical tax reasons.

A Warner Bros spokesperson said in an official statement that the choice to scrap Batgirl was due to a “strategic shift as it relates to the DC universe and HBO Max”.

Whatever the true reason, the sudden axing has left the cast and crew of the DC flick stunned and moviegoers outraged.

“We are saddened and shocked by the news,” directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah wrote in their response to the film being cancelled.

“We still can’t believe it. As directors, it is critical that our work be shown to audiences, and while the film was far from finished, we wish that fans all over the world would have had the opportunity to see and embrace the final film themselves.

“Maybe one day they will.”

Warner Bros has “shelved” the upcoming comic book film Batgirl, reportedly after poor test screenings. Picture: DC Films

As a DC fan and film buff, I hope the directors are right. Let us watch the film, judge it for ourselves, and perhaps even enjoy it. Honestly, how bad can it be?

It’s not as though the DC Extended Universe (DCEU) has a track record of only releasing certified masterpieces. Unlike its Marvel counterpart, the DCEU has included some absolute dud movies, all of them released quite happily by Warner Bros.

You may recall, for example, 1997’s Batman & Robin.

Considered the lowest rated Batman flick (12 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes), it’s filled with terrible dialogue (Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Mr. Freeze one-liner “Who killed the dinosaurs? The ice age!), awful costumes (nipples on the Batsuit!) and horrendous production designs.

Coincidentally, it also featured the cinematic debut of Batgirl, played by Alicia Silverstone in a supporting role.

Batman and Robin went down in history as one of the worst superhero films of all time.

Alicia Silverstone’s iteration of Batgirl was not well received.

How about 2004’s Catwoman? The movie was a cat-astrophe, and its lead star Halle Berry was so poor that she won a Razzie.

Or how about 2011’s Green Lantern? The film that was meant to launch the DCEU was visually overwhelming, overproduced and badly written.

All three of these films had glaringly obvious flaws, and have gone down in history as being among the worst superhero films of all time. No one at Warner Bros stopped them from being released to the public.

How many different iterations of Batman have we seen, of wildly varying quality, over the years? The studio has never stopped making them.

This was the first time we were going to see Batgirl in the lead role - an intriguing premise. The movie had already been filmed. If any subpar flick were going to be saved, this was it.

Yet this is the film, rather than any of the duds above, that has fallen victim to Warner Bros’ apparent quality standards.

Halle Berry won a Razzie for her performance in Catwoman.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Batgirl had landed a score in the low 60s at its only test screening.

That is not a stellar rating, but as THR noted, test screenings are not the final judgment for a movie - and other films with comparable test scores have gone on to be successful at the box office. Wildly successful, in some cases. The Stephen King adaptation It, for example, grossed more than $US700 million globally.

If the studio was so concerned about Batgirl and wanted to save the DCEU, why not postpone the movie and do reshoots?

It’s happened with other comic book films: Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (almost $US1 billion at the box office), 2019’s X-Men: Dark Phoenix ($US250 million) and 2015’s Fantastic Four ($US168 million) to name a few.

None of these were masterpieces, but they got released, and DCEU fans got to judge them on their merits.

That’s all the directors of Batgirl wanted. They’ve been robbed of that chance, for reasons that increasingy sound as though they have more to do with money than passion or concern for the source material.

Maybe Batgirl is the disaster it was first described as. Let’s find out. Put it on the streaming services. Give us a chance to watch it and decide for ourselves.