General Zod

When I worked at the studios I would go to early screenings (Before the score and special effects were added - way before post.. Why spend more money if it's going to go nowhere or need to be re-shot in some way?). What they wanted was good honest feedback even though the producer and director was in the room. They would also propose alternate endings other than the one we saw. It was actually something to be taken very seriously and you could possibly change a lot of lives by the words you use at that screener. It wasn't just movies but TV pilots as well. The only ones I really remember that i gave negative feedback was Hamlet (Mel Gibson) and Nothing But Trouble (Aykroyd). The only TV pilot I remember seeing with for The Flash (1990). Didn't care for it at all. Anyhow all 3 of these things were released so I guess I wasn't the only one who didn't care for 'em.

DJariya

Discovery is taking a tax write off on this movie and the Scoob! sequel they also killed. Because of that, the movies are 100% dead and will never ever be seen.

https://variety.com/2022/film/news/b...aa5dee56334940

Giantrobo

Sucks, but whatever. I was looking forward to this but it is what it is.

Draven

Its a bad look to complete a movie that should be relatively easy to make into a decent movie because it is so bad it shouldn’t even see the light of day. Not something to inspire confidence in the brand.

whotony

They’ll probably make more money from the tax write off then anything else they can do with it.

Sonny Corinthos

Agreed. That costume looks like something you would find at Party City.

whotony

Deftones

Costumes almost always look like shit out of context and not in action. Not a good way to judge something.

philo

My favorite part from the wrap article
Thanks for burning through $90 million bucks. We can't wait to work with you again.

Draven

Sure but it shouldn’t have gotten this far. That’s even worse - no one realized it was bad until a screening?

E Unit

So…worse than the Joel Schumacher ones? Really? This is all pretty damn laughable.

Artman

This is a new regime, rather than put out content they deem to be subpar they're scrapping it - and I'm here for it. I don't care for Grace Randolph but I think she's right, everything after Aquaman 2 is gone. The biggest casualty of course is never seeing Keaton as Batman, he'll never do it again even if it's offered... just unfortunate. But as Jack said, you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.

Jay G.

It can be really hard to judge a movie until there's at least an assembly cut. Before that, you basically have the script to go off of, and that might be fine. Then there's just dozens of shots for each scene, with dozens of takes for each, shot and screened out of order as dailies. You need someone to start hacking it together into a coherent story before you can get an idea of what the final product will be like. Even then, there's stories of films being "saved in the edit," where editorial decisions can make or break a film. So it's not surprising that they waited until a screening of the latest cut before deciding whether there was something salvageable there or not.

As for whether this film was nearly finished, while they had a screening, it's possible most, if not all, of the VFX were not yet completed, and that's a giant portion of the budget for modern superhero movies. They maybe didn't want to chase good money after bad by paying to finish it up with VFX, score, etc.

fujishig

Oh you spent one to two years of your life working on this? We're going to trash it publicly (well, via "leaks) so that we don't look bad cancelling it, then take the tax write off because we think that's a better deal than finishing your work and putting it up on our site. But yeah, can't wait for your next pitch.

DJariya

I would be nervous if I was on the production crew of Blue Beetle. Not sure how far they are into filming. Zaslav may not deem that movie worthy of a theatrical release and throw it into the trash.

milo bloom

Yeah, I don’t see how it can be that bad.

And not even giving it a Blu-ray release? That’s absurd. I was sorta interested in this one and not much else.

PhantomStranger

It's about damaging the Batman brand. A failed Batgirl movie could permanently ruin the character and make her a laughingstock if the movie is that bad. They had to wait years before using Catwoman on screen again after the Halle Berry disaster.

Hokeyboy

Only 8 years. But point taken.

How odd that there was only a single year between the Catwoman monstrosity and the masterful Batman Begins.

Deftones

Uhhhhh no. Batman will always be popular and people will always see Batman movies. Nobody is going to not see the next Batman movie if this one was shit.

candyrocket786

8 years between Batman/ Robin and Batman Begins. That's a long time in the entertainment world. That's the equivalent of like 40 years in hell...😆😆😆

devilshalo

I mean.. Morbius made money.. so what's the harm in releasing it in the next fiscal year after the write off? That's just gravy. Of course, Sony had No Way Home to offset that.

TheBigDave

They also shelved that Wonder Woman pilot back in 2011. That show wasn't good. And cancelling it probably saved the character for the DCU movies.

You can watch it here:

https://archive.org/details/wonder.w...cr.xvidt00ng0d

Hokeyboy

Because if they release it theatrically, they'll have to drop at least another $50M in prints and advertising. No point throwing more money after bad money. And it still completely damages the brand.

If they do it on HBO Max, there's basically norecourse for financial recoup, plus it still completely damages the brand.

It's a lose-lose situation for Warner Discovery, who do NOT subscribe "In for a penny, in for a pound" ethos. And that's probably a good thing.

GoldenJCJ

I had no interest in this before. I gotta be honest, I’m kind of interested in seeing it now.

dex14