Shortly after news broke that Warner Bros. was pulling the plug on its planned Batgirl movie, the scramble to explain what the heck was going on filled up the pop culture news cycle. There were reports that DC Films president Walter Hamada almost quit his gig because he wasn’t consulted on the move. Batgirl star Leslie Grace and her co-directors issued statements thanking the fans and the crew for all of their support, and those same fans questioned why this movie had to be scrapped, but Ezra Miller’s The Flash goes on without repercussion, given that actor’s unusual headlines. Basically, we all had questions, and many of them are pointed out by director Kevin Smith in a new and quite NSFW rant.
Kevin Smith has long been associated with the DC Universe, helming episodes of The Flash on The CW and hosting podcasts that rip inspiration from Batman, himself. He’s an uber fan, so when he speaks, DC fans usually respond in kind. And when it comes to Batgirl, which he spoke about on an episode of Hollywood Babble-On, Smith let it be known:
It's an incredibly bad look to cancel the Latina Batgirl movie. I don't give a shit if the movie was absolute fucking dogshit, man, and I guarantee you that it wasn't. The two directors who directed that movie did a couple of episodes of Ms. Marvel, and it was a wonderful fucking show, y'know. Great looking, and they had more money to do Batgirl than they had to do an episode of Ms. Marvel and stuff.
Batgirl’s quality is one of the things that I have been calling into question since the news broke that Warner Bros. was shelving the project. Because Kevin Smith is right. The Ms. Marvel episodes that were directed by Bilall Fallah and Adil El Arbi were without question the best chapters of the series. They had an aggressive but warm style that fit the character of Kamala Khan perfectly. So when they pitched their ideas for future Marvel projects, we were totally on board.
Also, the co-directors known collectively as Bilall and Adil did a terrific job on the sequel Bad Boys for Life, bringing that franchise back to life for Will Smith and Martin Lawrence.And while Will Smith’s Oscar debacle probably has derailed Bad Boys 4, there’s no question that audiences would have been lining up to see that movie because these two filmmakers brought such passion and energy to their film.
Back to Batgirl for a second, and the level of quality necessary to release said film. Discussing his own experience with DC through the CW shows, Kevin Smith went on to say:
And also… I love all the CW shows, and the CW shows show their budgetary constraints. And the big complaint they said here was, 'Oh well it isn't big enough to be a fucking theatrical release, so... It looked too cheap because it was a 90 million dollar movie.' How do you make a cheap-looking 90 million dollar fucking movie? But if it looked, like, slightly better than an episode of fucking Arrow, why couldn't we have seen that? It feels like there's more than just, 'We're gonna save 20 million dollars.'
Basically, the reasons given as to why Batgirl was cancelled don’t make a lot of sense. It wasn’t expensive enough to be showcased as a theatrical release, but it was deemed too expensive to drop on HBO Max. The quality was reportedly bad, but now curious fans will only clamor to see more, particularly to support Leslie Grace, or catch a glimpse of Michael Keaton in his classic Batsuit, as he was scheduled to be a supporting player in the movie.
People like Kevin Smith will continue to ask questions like this. But will we ever get better answers from the powers that be? That remains to be seen.
