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Batgirl's Leslie Grace Rejects DC's Claim Film Was 'Unreleasable' - Variety
In her first major interview since 'Batgirl' was shelved, Leslie Grace opens up how she found out about the cancellation, possibly returning to DC and Brendan Fraser's 'really sweet' wrap gift

Giantrobo

As she should. Shitting on this film makes it easier to forget it was shelved for tax reasons. I see folks in DC forums pushing the "it sucked that's why its not coming out" narrative hard until you remind them about the tax thing...then they're like "Oh yeah...".

milo bloom

Reminds of a comment I saw on twitter where they quoted the "it was unreleasable" comment and then added in "so was Space Jam 2 and that still got released" (it really was pretty bad).

fujishig

I mean if they were of the same quality I can absolutely see why they would release Space Jam 2 and not Batgirl considering the Lebron factor and everything.

I am a little surprised that they didn't have marketing and toylines lined up for Batgirl that would have made it more difficult to pull the plug so late.

stvn1974

There is no way Batgirl was worse than the Snyder DC films.

RocShemp

I dunno. I think both are a factor. Had they had a winner on their hands, like they seem to with The Flash, they would've totally rolled the dice on releasing Batgirl as well. It's easy to forget they could have easily written off the other upcoming DC flicks during that period as well. They only kept the ones that had a chance of making them money. Sure, the bet didn't pay off with Black Adam, however...

fujishig

Black Adam still made like 400 million dollars and had a bunch of toys/peripherals to sell, so I doubt shelving it for a tax write off was even on the table.

RocShemp

Interesting. Cos everybody talks about it like it was a huge financial disaster. Glad it made its large budget back, as well as made a modest profit. Not the best flick, but rather entertaining.

Why So Blu?

It wasn't a "disaster" but it didn't make money either. It had a budget of 190+ million and only made 168 million stateside and 224 internationally.


https://www.boxofficemojo.com/release/rl2728624641/

Count Dooku

This what she said:I guess we should trust that an experienced industry veteran like her would be able to predict the quality of a final cut based on what she saw in some scenes at the start of editing.

RocShemp

It made almost double it's budget. But adding whatever marketing costs were, I see your point. How's it doing in home video sales/rentals?



​​​​​​​But, seriously, what did you expect her to say? "It's a steaming pile of shit that deserves to be cast down into the depths of hell"? (Not an actual quote.) Cos she's not Mickey Rourke (or even Jason Momoa). Of course she's gonna say this never-to-be-seen flick she headlined was fantastic. Who's to prove otherwise?

Why So Blu?

Not sure about home video, but it was released early on HBO MAX.

Count Dooku

I don't blame her for wanting to put the best face on her situation. I don't like the "journalism" that spins her comments into a fake story that there's a cut of the movie that is great.

RocShemp

Okay. I get what you mean (and agree).

Jay G.

She saw as much as anyone saw, and it was enough for WBD to make their decisions to shelve it.

My personal guess is that the movie was likely fine for what it was originally intended to be, an HBO Max exclusive, but way too much money was spent on a streaming exclusive, in WBD's opinion. That left two options, with one being spending more on the film to do reshoots, improve post production, etc. to push it up to something that'd be a viable theatrical release. However, WBD was in cost-cutting mode at this point, right after the acquisition, and they were likely concerned they wouldn't make their money back on a theatrical release, so it didn't make sense to spend more money on it. However, it was too expensive as-is to be released on HBO Max, and they'd likely lose money on it if released only on streaming. So, the second option was to cancel it completely in time to get the tax writeoff, and they likely crunched the numbers and figured they'd lose the least amount of money that way, vs releasing with the current budget on HBO Max, or an expanded budget and production theatrically.

So the movie needn't have been awful to be considered "unreleasable." It was too expensive as an HBO Max release, and WBD wasn't in a position to spend more money on it for a very questionable theatrical release. It probably would've been fine on HBO Max, with most viewers satisfied with it, but WBD would've lost money on that release, and it was better financially to cut losses and get the tax break, especially since they were eying a complete reboot of the DCEU.

jjcool

People are still debating this? LOL. WB decided this movie was worth more as a write off than it ever hoped to make upon release. That doesn't happen with a good movie.

fujishig

And this is why it's still up for debate, people blaming the quality of the movie/acting and the actress feeling like she needs to stand up for her work.

GoldenJCJ

Yep. I’d guess the truth about the movie’s quailing lies somewhere in a scenario like this.

It’s too bad the actress has to defend her work like this. Chances are, if it had been allowed to be finished, the final product would have been…fine. It most likely wouldn’t have been the Bat version of Plan 9 From Outer Space that everyone seems to think it is.

I’d guess that if it ever was released, people would be disappointed that it wasn’t terrible…or great. It would just be a middle of the road comic book movie like we’ve seen a hundred times before.

Jay G.

Not to mention milo bloom's example of releasing Space Jam 2, and you understand that the quality of the work is only a relatively minor factor in deciding whether to release a film or not.

I remember when Harvey Weinstein left Miramax, and Disney discovered that Miramax had been buying and sitting on a lot of films just so nobody else could release them, exploiting a clause in their contract with Disney that their costs for purchasing film rights and such were only counted after the film was released, not before. Quentin Tarantino had to personally push for Miramax to release Hero starring Jet Li and directed by Zhang Yimou, going so far as to let Miramax plaster "Quentin Tarantino Presents" onto the posters, even though he wasn't involved in the production at all, to get it out there.


So the quality of the film rarely has any impact on whether it gets released.

And of course, most times, studios can't cancel a film and get a full tax write-off. This was only possible with Batgirl due to the timing of the WB + Discovery merger.

Basically, Batgirl was the victim of a unique confluence of events:

• WB under AT&T was overspending on content for HBO Max, with the strategy of taking the losses now to build up a subscriber base.
• AT&T dumped the debt they ran up onto Discovery as part of the purchase of WB to form WBD
• After the merger, WBD was desperately looking to cut costs quickly, to help free up cash for the debt payments.
• The tax laws allowed WBD to get tax write-offs on certainly losses accounted within a short window after the merger.
• Batgirl and SCOOB 2 were in a particular spot in their production where it made economic sense to cancel them for the limited-window tax write-off, instead of continuing production on them to release them.
• WBD was also considering rebooting DCEU, which the current Batgirl movie wouldn't factor into.

If the purchase/merger had happened sooner, the film may have been cancelled before it even got far enough where people could even make some sort of claim on what the final product would look like, and maybe other in-production products would've been killed, like Zack Snyder's cut of Justice League. In the sitiuation outline above, even a good movie could be cancelled, and only if it had been mind-bendingly incredible, better than anyone could've imagined, would WBD have maybe paid to complete it instead of taking the tax write-off.

fujishig

PLUS with the regime change, you could easily place the blame on the last regime for greenlighting stuff, basically just throwing them under the bus.

jjcool

It's too bad that we'll never know, since all the people that make the decision thought it was worth more as a writeoff.