The surprise shutdown of the HBO Max Batgirl movie mid-production shocked everybody, including the cast and crew making the Batgirl movie itself. Most of them found out what had happened when the rest of us did, and apparently that only happened after the movie had been scrubbed from Warner Bros. as the directors tried to grab some of the movie, but it was already gone.
Speaking with Skript, directors Adil El Arbi & Bilall Fallah talked about the way they found out they would not be able to finish the Batgirl movie, and the response they’ve received from fans and others since the movie was put on the shelf. The directors even admitted that they tried to salvage something from Batgirl. They were willing to shoot what they had done on their phones, but when they tried, the movie was gone. Fallah, explained…
No, we have nothing. Adil called and told me, 'Go ahead! Shoot everything on your cell phone!' I went on the server... Everything was gone.
If fans were hoping that we might get some sort of Deadpool like leak of footage that would show us what Batgirl would have been, that seems unlikely. At the very least, it won’t be coming from the directors, as the movie had apparently been scrubbed from the servers as part of the movie being given the ax, it sounds like that happened before the directors were even informed, likely to prevent them from doing exactly what they tried to do.
One assumes, of course, that the Batgirl files still exist someplace, even if the movie will never see the light of day, it seems unlikely that it would truly be deleted, but where the movie exists right now is anybody’s guess.
Batgirl is far from being in any sort of a state for people to watch however, even if it were leaked. Adil El Arbi & Bilall Fallah explain that they were still in the middle of editing when everything got shutdown. The digital effects were far from being complete. Beyond that the movie was going to need reshoots that had not yet been done. They admit that time and money would need to be allocated to get the movie complete, similar to what was done with the Snyder Cut of Justice League. Although, it seems there were particular shots that the directors wanted to keep that El Arbi says were very upset they did not get…
We were [like], 'Fucking shit!' We did not keep all the scenes with Batman in it.
There is one still image that was released prior to Batgirl being shown the door that included a look at Michael Keaton returning as Batman, but it seems that one shot may be the only image we ever see, as the directors were not able to keep anything else. We are still expecting to see Keaton return in The Flash. Although the long delayed Flash movie is having potential problems of its own.
