Kevin Smith Breaks Down Warner Bros.’ ‘Baffling’ Decision to Cancel ‘Batgirl’
Filmmaker Kevin Smith has joined the many people who are in deep confusion concerning Warner Bros. Discovery’s choice to scrap the almost completed Batgirl movie, which was slated for release on HBO Max, during the latest episode of his “Hollywood Babble-On” YouTube show.
In the episode, Smith talks with Ralph Garman, who brings up the canceled Batgirl movie, joking that maybe if it had been animated, they would have released it (in reference to the Super-pets movie out now). Smith shakes his head and sighs at the news. Garman makes the point that after all the months that people spent on the project, it deserves to be seen.
Smith first talks about the tax loopholes that Warner Bros. is taking advantage of to get a “twenty million dollar write down” on their $90 million movie—which means they can’t make any money off of Batgirl because then they’d have to give that tax money back. Smith says it sounds like them “fucking themselves out of $70 million.”
He then goes on to discuss the fact that people are now anxious about their favorite shows and that creators had to give their support to fans—including The Flash movie starring Ezra Miller, about which Smith then says, “That is the baffling thing. I don’t give a shit how bad the Batgirl movie is, nobody in that movie is complicated or has anything in their real life you have to market around. In The Flash movie, we all know there’s a big problem! Flash is the Reverse-Flash in real life.”
Smith then goes on to explain his own project with HBO that is no longer going forward, called Strange Adventures, and speculates that the Green Lantern stuff will be another casualty.
“It’s an incredibly bad look to cancel the Latina Batgirl movie,” Smith says, making sure to give caveats about not wanting to be “that guy.” (I get it, Kev.) “I don’t give a shit if the movie was absolute fucking dog shit – 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, and they had more money to do ‘Batgirl’ than they had to do an episode of Ms. Marvel.”
He also compares this to The CW’s shows, which he says he loves despite their budgetary constraints. “They said ‘Batgirl’ looked too cheap because it was a $90 million movie. How do you make a cheap-looking $90 million movie? If it looked slightly better than an episode of Arrow then why couldn’t we see that?”
Agreed.
Anyway, Clerks III coming soon!
(via Variety, featured image: Warner Bros.)
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