Peter Safran Says Shelving BATGIRL Was the Right Decision: "It Would Have Hurt DC"

Six months ago, Warner Bros. revealed that their feature film Batgirl, which had been completed, was being pulled from its release, never to see the light of day. Fans had been pretty excited about this movie, especially the prospect of seeing Michael Keaton return as Batman.

It felt like a really weird decision in an era when releasing movies on streaming platforms like DC’s home of HBO is totally commonplace, and fans would have been happy to watch it from home. But the new heads of DC Studios are now defending the move, with Peter Safran saying:

“Batgirl’s a character that inevitably we will include in our story. On the Batgirl front, it’s not about late in the process of the film getting canceled. I saw the movie, and there are a lot of incredibly talented people in front of and behind the camera on that film. But that film was not releasable, and it happens sometimes. That film was not releasable. I actually think that [president and CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery David] Zaslav and the team made a very bold and courageous decision to cancel it because it would have hurt DC. It would have hurt those people involved.”

He continued:

“I think that they really stood up to support DC. The characters, the story, the quality of all of that. I spoke to Adil [El Arbi] and Bilall [Fallah] — the directors — last week, we were chatting. We’d love to be in business with all those folks. Christina Hodson wrote it. Some people are already back in business with us. As I said, a lot of talented people were involved, but the film just was not releasable. It would not have been able to compete in the theatrical marketplace; it was built for the small screen. So, again, I think it was not an easy decision, but they made the right decision by shelving it.”

I wonder what made the movie so bad. I mean, DC films generally range from great to downright terrible, so I believe him, but it’s sad that they made the entire thing, and no one was able to give them direction to fix it while they worked on it. It feels like a real waste of time and talent. But hopefully, Batgirl’s story gets to be told someday soon.

via: Variety