The world of the Seventh Art continues to be dismayed by Warner Bros. Discovery’s decision to completely cancel the premiere of “Batgirl,” the DC movie that was originally to be released on HBO Max and was already pretty much finished. From the company they claimed that this drastic move is due to a change of strategy with the DC universe. They want their superhero movies to be great movies for theaters, not for direct streaming release.
Although the film directed by Leslie Grace cost about 70 million dollars, which would rise to 90 million for the expenses related to the pandemic, it wouldn’t have been big enough for the current studio executive to fit into a big movie event, so there was a chance it wouldn’t be profitable to release it in theaterssomething that would increase the budget by another 30 or 40 million dollars in refinements and promotions.
Before the decision of David Zaslav, CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, was officially confirmed, the first to report the cancellation of the “Batgirl” premiere was the New York Post. The reasons given by his source were that the quality of the film directed by Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah (“Ms. Marvel”) was terrible and that the test screenings with the audience had been a disaster. IndieWire confirmed that there were test screenings of “Batgirl” the week before San Diego Comic-Con (but they wouldn’t show it at the convention even though it would delight viewers), and that it has received bad reviews, but not so bad as to cancel its first when it has almost all the work done. The source consulted by IndieWire says there were no unusual reactions to those test screenings.
Better bird in hand …
A nice reaction from the test audience would have been one of the reasons why Zaslav decided it it makes more sense for him to completely cancel any release of the film and deduct the money it cost in taxes because it was a decision of the former WarnerMedia executives prior to the merger with Discovery. In this way he would recover the money, but he would be forced to never be able to release it in any way and in any format. If the film’s success isn’t assured, it’s better to recoup those millions of dollars than risk releasing it and increasing a fairly large inherited debt.
This type of financial wildcard is about to expire, it is said in the middle of this month. From there, other projects might not pass as lost funds, so the rest of the projects already started may have better luck than “Batgirl” if there are no more last-minute surprises. James Gunn, for example, reassured “The Peacemaker” fans that season two is moving forward..
But we must not let our guard down because on Thursday 4 August the company’s appeal to investors will take place to take stock of the last quarter. In it they could reveal new short-term plans and seeing what Zaslav has given time to do in a few months at the helm of the company, such as shutting down CNN + or stopping HBO Max’s international expansion, anything can happen.
Source: E Cartelera
