Batgirl movie shelved despite near-completion.

[Crazedwraith]

The Wrap

Warner Bros. Discovery will not release “Batgirl,” either theatrically or on HBO MAX, TheWrap has learned. The $90 million project is effectively dead.

“The decision to not release Batgirl reflects our leadership’s strategic shift as it relates to the DC universe and HBO Max. Leslie Grace is an incredibly talented actor and this decision is not a reflection of her performance. We are incredibly grateful to the filmmakers of Batgirl and Scoob! Holiday Haunt and their respective casts and we hope to collaborate with everyone again in the near future,” according to Warner Bros. Picture Spokesperson.

Made under a previous regime, “Batgirl” was initially designed to be an HBO Max release, and then was being considered for theatrical distribution. Due to COVID issues and shutdowns, the budget ballooned to $90 million.

The movie stars “In the Heights” breakout star Leslie Grace in the title role of Barbara Gordon.

The leaders of the studio determined ultimately, in spite of reshoots and increased budget, that the movie simply did not work, according to insiders. The new owners and management, led by CEO David Zaslav, are committed to making DC titles big theatrical event films, and “Batgirl” isn’t that. Insiders added that studio brass loves the film’s directors and star, and are actively planning to work with them soon.

Warner Bros. Discovery is working to elevate DC Films to be seen on the big screen. “Batgirl” had not been scripted or produced as a theatrical film.

“Bad Boys for Life” filmmaking duo Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah directed “Batgirl.” The film also starred Michael Keaton as caped crusader Bruce Wayne/Batman. Last month, El Arbi and Fallah got great notices for directing the first two episodes of Marvel Studios’ “Ms. Marvel.”

Additionally, according to the Hollywood Reporter, “Warners has also decided to shelve animated feature “Scoob!: Holiday Haunt” which had a budget in the $40 million range.”

Batgirl made her debut in the Batman mythos 50 years ago as Barbara Gordon, the daughter of Gotham City Police Commissioner Jim Gordon. Since then, she has become one of the most popular superheroines in the world. When Barbara Gordon was paralyzed by a gunshot from the Joker in the classic graphic novel “The Killing Joke,” other crimefighters, like The Huntress and Orphan, took up the Batgirl name while Barbara became Oracle, a tech-savvy aide to Batman. Barbara later returned to the Batgirl role, while her assault in “The Killing Joke” was revised.

Filming initially took place in Glasgow, Scotland, from November 2021 to March 2022, and was in post-production. A spokesperson for the studio had no comment. A representative for Grace had no immediate comment.

The New York Post first reported the news.

It seems unlikely this movie really can be so bad that it's not worth releasing even on HBO Max. It's got Michael Keaton as Batman, it's got internet meme darling Brendan Fraser.

Basically there's a new guy in charge of DC movies and he's chucking out the initiatives of the old guard in the name of Cost saving but it seems anything not fitting his vision of what DC movies should be. The fact it's with a non-white lead actress is also making people a might suspicious.

It's extremely rare for a basically done movie not to be released like this. Apparently they can write off the budget for tax purposes or something.

[LadyTevar]

To me it's extremely suspicious as well.

Why shelf a project that is DONE?

[Solauren]

Possible reasons I can see are....

#1 - It's related to Erza Millers rather public issues.

We know that in the Flash Movie, he was supposed to interact with the Micheal Keaton version of Batman.
That movie is now essentially scrapped due to Erza's real life legal (and other) issues.

It's possible that the Flash movie was a major point/connection for the Batgirl movie, and you'd have to retool alot of it to drop that connection.
If so, even though it's nearly done in one version, it's not useable without a public relations nightmare continuing.

#2 - There is a major problem with one of the actors that hasn't made the papers yet, and the studio would like to avoid any connection to it.

#3 - Due to alot of negative publicity that's been connected to actors involved in it, (Erza Miller's issues, Amber Heards issues*, the theatrical vs longer run Justice League, the so-called white-washing by casting Gal Gadot as Cleopatra**, Ben Afleck dropping out, etc), the new management at Warner Brothers want's to scrap the current attempt at a DC Movie-verse. If so, they'll wait a few years, and then go ask Marvel how they did it.


* Amber Heard - if you are not aware, there is/was a rather nasty online campaign to get Amber Heard replaced in Aquaman 2. That and she apparently leaked some of the plot during her trial. I could care less about it, besides the fact it was clogging up a few meme sites.

** Groups are accusing the casting of Gal Gadot as Cleopatra VII Philopator as white washing, amongst other things. Said groups also say that Cleopatra should be played by an Egyptian. Okay, fair enough. But if you want to be accurate, you need to go with Cleopatra's ethnicity.

And Cleopatra was not Egyptian. Cleopatra was mostly Macedonian-Greek. The last of the Egyptian blooded Pharoahs were killed fighting Alexander the Great,. who then conquered Egypt and put Cleopatra's ancestors in charge.. Cleopatra's ancestors were high level members of his government that solidified their own rulership of Egypt after Alexander died, and then practiced inbreeding to keep 'the royal line pure'.

Seriously, check out her family tree here. Julius Caesar was the first marriage outside the family in 9 generations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemaic_dynasty

[Crazedwraith]

They've pointedly not scrapped Flash or Aquaman 2 though. That's why it's so fucking weird. They are not scrapping the film staring the problematic actors but that might tie into it?

It really seems like a power move by the new CEO to enforce their vision.

[Batman]

Maybe they finally realized their Batgirl suit positively sucks?

[Galvatron]

Maybe they decided against further devaluing the DCEU by turning it into another Arrowverse. Hooray for quality control.

[Crazedwraith]

Again, this isn't quality control.

The guy's taking an axe to anything his predecessor did to build up HBO Max to sabotage it like Removing exclusive films from it without warning and Gutting it's staff.

Anything he says about the movie's quality is extremely suspect.

[Crazedwraith]

Twitter

Apparently shelving Batgirl recoups their losses in the region of 15-20 million. No matter how bad it was, you reckon it wouldn't make that much in box office?

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Claims of whitewashing are stupid as Gal Gadot basically is of the right ethnicity for the role, and with her wheatish complexion she is most definitely NOT white.

Canning Batgirl probably has something to do with the failure of the Batwoman series, which basically went off the rails halfway through season 3 and was cancelled soon after.

[Crazedwraith]

^ Wouldn't explain all the other cancelled projects and lay offs at HBO would it?

[EnterpriseSovereign]

I have no clue about those, just that despite a promising start Batwoman had a very Troubled Production behind the scenes and the decline during Season 3 was the last straw.

[Broomstick]

Claims of whitewashing are stupid as Gal Gadot basically is of the right ethnicity for the role, and with her wheatish complexion she is most definitely NOT white.

Actually, a lot of Americans would consider her White. The position of Jews in the US is often ambiguous that way. Gal Gadot is of Ashkenazi descent, and so am I, and I have definitely been viewed/considered/treated as White in the US.

While there are some White extremists in the US who do not regard Jewish people as White (regardless of skin color) pretty much any person of color is going to see Ashkenazi Jews as White, and by extension, Ms. Gadot as White.

[ray245]

They've pointedly not scrapped Flash or Aquaman 2 though. That's why it's so fucking weird. They are not scrapping the film staring the problematic actors but that might tie into it?

It really seems like a power move by the new CEO to enforce their vision.

Watch as WB and HBO turned into reality TV shows. Because that is the easy way of making money.

[Solauren]

Claims of whitewashing are stupid as Gal Gadot basically is of the right ethnicity for the role, and with her wheatish complexion she is most definitely NOT white.

Actually, a lot of Americans would consider her White. The position of Jews in the US is often ambiguous that way. Gal Gadot is of Ashkenazi descent, and so am I, and I have definitely been viewed/considered/treated as White in the US.

While there are some White extremists in the US who do not regard Jewish people as White (regardless of skin color) pretty much any person of color is going to see Ashkenazi Jews as White, and by extension, Ms. Gadot as White.

Also, as I pointed out, Cleopatra herself was not black, but Macedonian Greek. They're generally accepted as 'White' as well.

[Broomstick]

Some time back we have a couple of posters who were adamant that Ancient Egyptians were all Black, as in south-of-the-Sahara Black. Counter-argument being that "Ancient Egypt" lasted thousands of years and, being a cross-roads, had people of all sorts of ethnicities and skin color.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Claims of whitewashing are stupid as Gal Gadot basically is of the right ethnicity for the role, and with her wheatish complexion she is most definitely NOT white.

Actually, a lot of Americans would consider her White. The position of Jews in the US is often ambiguous that way. Gal Gadot is of Ashkenazi descent, and so am I, and I have definitely been viewed/considered/treated as White in the US.

Just out of interest, would you say you have the same eye, hair, and skin colour as Gadot?

[Lord Revan]

Some time back we have a couple of posters who were adamant that Ancient Egyptians were all Black, as in south-of-the-Sahara Black. Counter-argument being that "Ancient Egypt" lasted thousands of years and, being a cross-roads, had people of all sorts of ethnicities and skin color.

Weren't this same group of people who insisted the Cleopatra must be black (mostly based on the fact we're not 100% certain who her mother was) and has unique and "non-white" name (even though the actual full name of the famous Cleopatra is Cleopatra VII Philopator and was the 7th Cleopatra just in the Ptolemaic dynasty (or possibly 6th as her mother might have been both the 5th and 6th under different names in the Royal naming list) While the ordinal number is later addition the name "Philopator" isn't and was used to separate her from previous women named "Cleopatra" in the dynasty, not mention famous ones before including one of the wives (7th to be exact) of Phillip II of Macedon and well as a sister of Alexander the Great (note these were 2 different women and Phillip didn't marry one of his daughters). All this clearly setting "Cleopatra" as fairly common ancient Macedonian name.

And this is ignoring that Cleopatra VII was highly unpopular among the Romans and yet there's no mention of her having "blood tainted by barbarians" which her enemies would said if she was of obviously sub-Saharan skin tone (and yes the Romans in Caesar's time did know what Macedonians looked like).

[Broomstick]

Claims of whitewashing are stupid as Gal Gadot basically is of the right ethnicity for the role, and with her wheatish complexion she is most definitely NOT white.

Actually, a lot of Americans would consider her White. The position of Jews in the US is often ambiguous that way. Gal Gadot is of Ashkenazi descent, and so am I, and I have definitely been viewed/considered/treated as White in the US.

Just out of interest, would you say you have the same eye, hair, and skin colour as Gadot?

Similar hair color, lighter eyes and skin although I am the lightest member of my family.

My father had darker hair than her and similar eyes, although he, too, had pale skin.

Two of my three sisters have/had almost identical coloring to Ms. Gadot, and the third is darker skinned with darker hair and eyes than Gal Gadot.

And yet we've all been considered White here in the US. Except for that time my dad tried to pay for a hotel room in a sunset town in Kentucky back in 1968.

My mother was not Ashkenazi, she was of German and Irish descent. And her skin was actually darker than my dad's, even if her hair was red and her eyes green. Dad had black hair and dark brown eyes, though.

[Broomstick]

Some time back we have a couple of posters who were adamant that Ancient Egyptians were all Black, as in south-of-the-Sahara Black. Counter-argument being that "Ancient Egypt" lasted thousands of years and, being a cross-roads, had people of all sorts of ethnicities and skin color.

Weren't this same group of people who insisted the Cleopatra must be black (mostly based on the fact we're not 100% certain who her mother was) and has unique and "non-white" name ...snip

Yep. Those are the folks.

[Solauren]

And this is ignoring that Cleopatra VII was highly unpopular among the Romans and yet there's no mention of her having "blood tainted by barbarians" which her enemies would said if she was of obviously sub-Saharan skin tone (and yes the Romans in Caesar's time did know what Macedonians looked like).

The Romans thought very highly of the Macedonians the Alexander the Great in-particular. Cleopatra being of Macedonian blood was part of the reason Julius Caesar married her and had a child with her.

[Lord Revan]

And this is ignoring that Cleopatra VII was highly unpopular among the Romans and yet there's no mention of her having "blood tainted by barbarians" which her enemies would said if she was of obviously sub-Saharan skin tone (and yes the Romans in Caesar's time did know what Macedonians looked like).

The Romans thought very highly of the Macedonians the Alexander the Great in-particular. Cleopatra being of Macedonian blood was part of the reason Julius Caesar married her and had a child with her.

Yeah that's the point they knew thanks to their respect of people with Macedonians blood the Romans knew what a person with Macedonian blood looked like, had Cleopatra had mostly sub Saharan African features you can bet it would have been mentioned by her enemies in Rome (remember that to Romans "barbarian" was "anyone outside the Greco-Roman cultural area").

[Tsyroc]

From what I've been seeing WB gets a tax right off on canning Batgirl outright. Plus they save on not having to do the finishing touches or market it. That part I've seen speculated as being around $20 million. I've heard that some of the screenings were pretty good and maybe better than Aquaman 2 but who knows?

As for their own stuff they are pulling from HBO Max. Supposedly it's to save on having to pay residuals. The only thing on the list that I think I've watched was Aquaman: King of Atlantis. I have no idea how residuals work on streaming platforms. You'd think they could tie it to views but maybe just being on there counts. If that's the case I suspect that a lot of future streaming projects will have residual pay (if any) tied to how much people watch the content.

I've also been seeing that there's a bit of a fight over cancelling the Flash movie. Apparently some on the board want to cancel it but the CEO is still behind it.

[bilateralrope]

Here's a slide that they put out showing how they plan to distinguish HBO Max and Discovery+ content

Try and explain it in a way that leaves HBO in a good light. Because what I see is them saying that male viewers like scripted, female viewers like unscripted. So that's all they want to make. If you've got a scripted show with a large female audience, or some reality TV with a large male audience, they don't want it.

Also, they pulled a lot of cartoons from the platform.
Infinity Train, Summer Camp Island, and other shows wiped from HBO Max

Here’s why and how you can still watch them

By Petrana Radulovic@Pet_rana Aug 19, 2022, 1:49pm EDT

HBO Max has removed 36 shows and movies from its platform, including a lot of kids and family content such as Sesame Street spinoff The Not-Too-Late Show With Elmo, beloved Cartoon Network show OK K.O.! Let’s Be Heroes, and teen drama Generation. One of the most frustrating eliminations is the highly acclaimed and also frankly amazing Infinity Train — which had already been removed from airing on Cartoon Network, punted to streaming-only with little fanfare, and canceled after just four seasons.

The creators behind these shows were blindsided by this decision, and justifiably upset. Julia Pott, creator of fantasy slice-of-life series Summer Camp Island, tweeted about the removal.

“We worked for 5 years to make 100 episodes of animation,” wrote Pott. “We worked late into the night, we let ourselves go, we were a family of hard working artists who wanted to make something beautiful, and HBO MAX just pulled them all like we were nothing. Animation is not nothing!”

Not only have these shows been removed, but the turnaround from the announcement to the actual removal was so quick that many fans barely had time to react. It’s all part of Warner Bros. Discovery’s latest move to turn a profit, following laying off 14% of the HBO Max staff and canceling the upcoming Batgirl movie. Yet for the creators behind the shows and for the fans who loved them, it feels particularly cruel.

WAIT, SO THESE SHOWS ARE JUST GONE?

So, technically, full seasons and episodes of many of these shows are still available to purchase on Amazon, Google Play, and iTunes, but no one knows exactly for how long. And some of the shows, like Summer Camp Island and Victor and Valentino, both of which have unaired new episodes, will air on Cartoon Network.

But as of today, they are nowhere to be found on HBO Max — and, in the case of Infinity Train and Mao Mao: Heroes Pure of Heart, all official videos on the Cartoon Network YouTube and any tweets mentioning the shows have been removed. Additionally, the Infinity Train soundtrack has vanished from music streaming services, and official Amazon listings of the DVDs have been taken down.

Unfortunately, this is not an uncommon phenomenon in the world of entertainment media. For years, Disney locked up physical versions of its movies in “the Disney vault,” so that it could rerelease them every so often in limited-time runs. Old shows and movies that weren’t popular sometimes never got physical releases and then just faded out of existence (looking at you, WITCH, my beloved).

But in this case, it’s a little weirder. Many of the titles on the list are just a few years old and also loved by critics. It’s not a matter of an old forgotten thing just getting left behind, but a very deliberate move on behalf of Warner Bros. Discovery to cut losses — despite the fact that doing so undermines the hard work of the people behind these shows and movies. And Warner Bros. Discovery seemingly completely eradicating the existence of some of these shows from the internet is salt in the wound.

WHY DID WARNER DO THIS IN THE FIRST PLACE?

Warner Bros. Discovery is going to merge HBO Max and Discovery Plus into one big streaming service by 2023, and that means some cleanup.

“As we work toward bringing our content catalogs under one platform, we will be making changes to the content offering available on both HBO Max and Discovery+. That will include the removal of some content from both platforms,” an HBO Max spokesman said in a statement.

Warner Bros. Discovery has not officially said why they picked these particular shows to remove, but one theory is because it still has to pay residuals to the cast and crew behind HBO Max Originals. By removing them entirely… Well, if no one watches something, no one needs to get paid, right? Additionally, a lot of the shows on the shortlist fall under the kids and family banner and it could very well be that Warner Bros. Discovery wants to move away from that demographic.

According to slides shared at Warner Bros. Discovery’s earnings call, the company claims that HBO’s content skews toward an adult male audience, while Discovery’s skews toward adult women. One theory that CNBC reported was that in order to maximize profits, Warner Bros. Discovery decided that kids and family content wasn’t worth pursuing and just axed most of it instead. It could be that the reason Warner Bros. Discovery tried to completely erase some of these shows from its online footprint is because it wants to sell the rights, and they could live on elsewhere, but that isn’t a guarantee.

BUT I LOVE THESE SHOWS! WHAT CAN I DO?

If you want to legally support your favorite shows, you can still purchase a lot of the episodes on Amazon, iTunes, or Google Play — for now. Some DVD sets are available through third party sellers, so buy them if you can. Tune into Cartoon Network for episodes of Summer Camp Island and Victor and Valentino when they air. Follow the creators of these shows for updates and see their suggestions for the best way to watch these shows and support their work.

The full list of removed content is below:

12 Dates of Christmas
About Last Night
Aquaman: King of Atlantis
Close Enough
Detention Adventure
Dodo
Ellen’s Next Great Designer
Elliott From Earth
Esme & Roy
The Fungies!
Generation Hustle
Generation
Infinity Train
Little Ellen
Mao Mao, Heroes of Pure Heart
Messy Goes to Okido
Mia’s Magic Playground
Mighty Magiswords
My Dinner with Herve
My Mom, Your Dad
Odo
OK K.O.! Let’s Be Heroes
The Ollie & Moon Show
Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures
Ravi Patel’s Pursuit of Happiness
Select Sesame Street specials
Make It Big, Make It Small
Share
Squish
Summer Camp Island
The Not-Too-Late Show With Elmo
The Runaway Bunny (special)
Theodosia
Tig n’ Seek
Uncle Grandpa
Victor and Valentino
Yabba Dabba Dinosaurs

Note that residuals is just a guess at the reason. I doubt it would explain removing any Youtube content or tweets mentioning the shows.

[LadyTevar]

Well... that's a lot of Bullshit.

[Zaune]

Indeed it is. From what I'm hearing from various cartoon fandoms, they aren't just delisting shows but scrubbing them from the websites entirely, including credits lists, which means a lot of people in the animation industry have just had their career prospects kneecapped because big chunks of their work history are now unverifiable. There's not going to be very many studios who'll accept a link to a torrent site in someone's portfolio.