Batgirl Movie: Warner Bros. Won’t Release $80M Project

Warner Bros. Discovery’s HBO Max streaming service was originally scheduled to release a new film about DC character Barbara Gordon, aka Batgirl, this year. The budget for the film was $80 million, which is said to have increased to $90 million due to Covid-19. The release on HBO Max is now nothing, because the film has been officially put on hold.

More cinema, less streaming and lower costs

Leading the way is new Warner Bros. Discovery boss David Zaslav, who recently took over from Jason Kilar. The latter was already planning to prioritize Warner Bros. film productions more strongly on the cinema sector and less on the streaming offer. David Zaslav is now taking this path, together with cost-saving measures.

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As a result, Batgirl was not released. At first glance, 80 or 90 million US dollars seems enormous, a comparison with another DC film puts the sum into perspective a little. “The Batman”, for example, which opened in cinemas in March of this year, came with a budget of 185 million US dollars. In addition to Batgirl, the $40 million project “Scoob! Holiday Hunt” will also be discontinued.

Leslie Grace, known from “In the Heights”, took on the leading role of Barbara Gordon/Batgirl. Additional characters were played by Michael Keaton, James Gordon and Brendan Fraser, while Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah directed. On the non-release of Batgirl, a spokesman for Warner Bros. publicly stated:

“The decision not to release Batgirl reflects the strategic shift in our leadership towards the DC Universe and HBO Max. Leslie Grace is an incredibly talented actress and this decision does not reflect her achievement. We are the filmmakers of Batgirl and Scoob! Holiday Haunt and their respective cast members are incredibly grateful and we hope to work with everyone again in the near future.”

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Industry insiders, meanwhile, are saying that big-budget movies optimized for streaming no longer make financial sense for the company’s new cost-saving strategy. After Warner Media became Warner Bros. Discovery in April 2022, they looked for three billion US dollars that could be saved. These included the streaming service CNN+, which gobbled up $300 million and was scrapped after a month, and JJ Abrams’ HBO original “Demimonde,” which had a budget of $200 million.

Source: via Hollywood reporter