TomOpus

Don't they still look at daily rushes to avoid issues and change shit if it's not working?

Artman

That they don't give a rip about the twitterati bitching about those made up issues is exactly why I'm excited by this move. They aren't going to shovel crap like this film out to the audience, lose money and hurt the brand. I love it!

Draven

Don’t worry…we get it.

Gizmo

Shows with 6/8/13 episode seasons just never air. That is money sunk in. You want me to try and prove they were $90 million? Who cares about the price. Why is it OK to do it to TV but not to a 2 hour straight to TV Movie? So much outrage when this happens all the time in other entertainment medium.

You are stuck on some price tag. What if the movie was $30mil, the cost of an average show on TV? Looking at the costume and reading the reviews, this was a CW pilot.

Count Dooku

I love how you never accept that you were just mistaken about something.

You asked why people were making such a big deal about this, and you got your answer: the $90 million price tag.

They spent 90 million dollars, had the film in some kind of completed state, and dumped it. And they know that even if it was a steaming pile of shit, because it's a DC superhero movie, it would have made back more than it's budget at the box office. Plus merchandising!

Right now, some of the most expensive TV shows being made are the MCU dramas that (reportedly) cost upwards of $25 million per episode. And Disney has very high confidence that those shows are drawing subscribers to Disney+ and feed content and interest into the MCU movies that earn hundreds of millions (sometimes a billion) of dollars at the box office. Plus merchandising!

This does not happen all the time, as you claim, and TV shows don't cost what you think. And they don't have merchandising!

Yellowstone costs $8 million per episode and 1883 costs $10 million, and those are considered very expensive for TV dramas that are not reliant on lots of fantasy action and FX. Virgin River costs $3 million per episode.

PhantomStranger

Everyone has a ten-year plan until the first movie comes out and totally bombs. I think this was a statement meant to temporarily appease Wall Street more than anything else.

jjcool

I guess less than a million viewers is "a lot" for a summer show.

jjcool

Wonder Woman 1984 didn't.

Deftones

Yeah let's use a movie released during the height of the pandemic and also simultaneously on HBO Max as an example.

DJariya

yeah not a good comparison. WW84 was released when the vast majority of theaters were closed worldwide. And they decided they couldn't postpone it any longer. It was already in the can almost 2 years. It was fucked financially regardless of reviews.

If it was released this summer, it would have made money.

Count Dooku

Abob Teff

That is actually what my issue is, Art. This whole DC thing, going way back, has been a series of “My toys now, my sandbox now” decisions that seem to be made by changing executive regimes that really don’t give a shit about anything more than erasing what the last guy did.

DC has long been criticized for having no plan (ala early Marvel) and this endless parade of buyouts and corporate overlords have only done increasingly more damage.

I can’t say I disagree with some of the things being said or the decisions being made, but the tone continues to reek of the stench of the past.

RocShemp

I have mixed feelings about this whole cancellation. On the one hand, I was already worried when the director's were announced (I hated Bad Boys for Life and was only mildly interested because of Keaton). But this cancellation has a "throwing out the baby with the bathwater" vibe.

Decker

Thought this post from Jeffery Wells, a Hollywood blogger I’ve followed for decades, was interesting :

Seasoned director–writer friendo: “I’ve heard from [a post-production guy] that the low Batgirl test scores are accurate and that it’s basically not releasable. Quote: ’It makes Catwoman with Halle Berryseem like Abel Gance’s Napoleon.’ Kevin Smith and others are castigating David Zaslav for this, but a stinker is a stinker.”

Follow–up: “The source works where they transferred and uploaded a digital internal workprint for online viewing. It was the same version that was test-screened…[he] had heard it hadn’t gone well and knew why.

“There were a copious amount of ‘scene missings’ and incomplete or vacant opticals, but [he] said it plays like a long unsold pilot for the CW.”

TomOpus

Like anyone interested in Batgirl would even know of the Napoleon movie much less Napoleon himself. Outside of snippets I never had a desire to watch the whole damn movie.

Count Dooku

That person has never seen Citizen Kane or The Godfather or even The Dark Knight, so those references were not available to them.

Decker

Yeah it was a real film snob comment. But if he thought the film was utter shit, that might be worth considering.

Draven

Catwoman was released in 2004 when we still didn't know how to make comic book movies. It is incredible to me that 18 years later, a film could actually near completion without people who have all seen great comic book movies since then raising their hands and going "this isn't working".

Can I get a lucrative job in Hollywood that is just me and a red pen, fixing scripts? I've wanted to do this since Attack of the Clones, where every other word out of Hayden Christensen's mouth is either "master" or "m'lady". I guarantee I could fix some of this shit. And if I can do it, the people actually working on the film should definitely be able to do it.

Noonan

All I'm seeing from that comment above is that a digital workprint exists.

bchbdaddy

What the fuck does pothead Kevin Smith have to say about any of this? “ my shitty movies get released so why not Batgirl” or “sell it as a shitty nft”

People need to stop quoting him like he’s a fucking expert. Put the joint down and put out a good movie.

Draven

Because he is a highly successful comic book writer (including Batman comics) and comic book store owner in addition to a comic-centric movie maker.

Noonan

Good lord. Where did Kevin Smith hurt you?

Giantrobo

Saying Batgirl was shitty sounds a lot better and Fanboy acceptable than "We wasted 90mil for Tax Reasons". It also also spreads easier on Social Media.

jjcool

Glad we agree.

PhantomStranger

Someone I trust told me one test score for Batgirl was in the 30s. Now test scores aren't always indicative due to the random audiences they use, but even garbage movies usually land in the 50s or 60s.

Almost the entire plot has been leaked. I think painting the cancellation solely as a tax write-off is a small favor to the creative talent involved.