BATGIRL Directors Adil El Arbi And Bilall Fallah On THE FLASH: "We Watched It And We Were Sad”

BATGIRL Directors Adil El Arbi And Bilall Fallah On THE FLASH: "We Watched It And We Were Sad”

The directors of the now defunct Batgirl movie, Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, have revealed that they watched The Flash, and the experience made them feel sad...

By MarkCassidy - Sep 11, 2023 08:09 PM EST
Filed Under: Batgirl

Based on the reaction from a lot of fans, sitting through The Flash clearly wasn't the most pleasant experience for quite a few people, but it sounds like it wasn't a particularly positive watch for Batgirl directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah for a very different reason.

While chatting with Insider to promote their new Syrian war drama, Rebel, the filmmakers explained why watching the Scarlet Speedster's solo debut made them "sad."

"We watched it and we were sad,” Adil revealed. “We love director Andy Muschietti and his sister Barbara, who produced the movie. But when we watched it, we felt we could have been part of the whole thing. We didn’t get the chance to show Batgirl to the world and let the audience judge for themselves. Because the audience really is our ultimate boss and should be the deciders of if something is good or bad, or if something should be seen or not.”

The pair were originally told that Batgirl would release after The Flash, continuing Michael Keaton's revived tenure as Batman. However, Warner Bros. Discovery later decided to scrap the film completely as a tax write off.

“Our movie was very different than The Flash,” Adil added. “That has a big fantasy component, ours was more grounded. More like Tim Burton’s Gotham City.” Bilall described the cancellation as the “biggest disappointment of our careers,” adding, “As a fanboy, just to be in the presence of Keaton as Batman, that’s just a privilege and an honor. But it’s a bittersweet feeling.”

We've heard that Batgirl simply wasn't up to snuff, with DC Studios co-head Peter Safran describing it as "un-releasable." We may never know if this was accurate, but either way, the movie never seeing the light of day hasn't deterred Arbi and Fallah from potentially working on another DC-based project.

"There's still a feeling of unfinished business," Bilall said. "Our love for DC, Batman, Batgirl, Gotham City, it's so big that, as fans, we could never say no to another project. If we got another chance to be part of it, we'd do it. We didn't get our day in court. We still want to make our case."

As for Batgirl star Leslie Grace, she seems to feel there might be an opportunity to suit-up as Barbara Gordon again down the line in the new DCU, so we may not have seen the last of Gotham City's other Caped Crusader.

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TheLobster
TheLobster - 9/11/2023, 8:13 PM
No way Batgirl was gonna fare any better than The Flash lol
mountainman
mountainman - 9/11/2023, 8:14 PM
@TheLobster - It would have earned more than Blue Beetle but less than The Flash most likely.
Amaru
Amaru - 9/11/2023, 8:15 PM
I can't imagine that Batgirl would have been any worse.
NegativeNerd
NegativeNerd - 9/12/2023, 1:46 AM
@Amaru - I guess we’ll never know. At least we were able to see the Flash.
NinnesMBC
NinnesMBC - 9/11/2023, 8:23 PM
They have every right to feel like that, I also feel for them.

What Zaslav did to them and the cast was petty and done out of full greed. It defined how his regime was gonna be and one can't help but feel that all that has happened to him and WBD in terms of films this year is literally that karma coming back like a boomerang to his face. And deservedly so.

Honestly Kevin Feige should hire them to direct one of their upcoming films and show that a-hole how it's done when you believe in your team and the IP product instead of scrapping it for tax write-offs. Anything they're given they'll likely knock it out of the park and give Zaslav a seizure.

They should be in the same potential director cast list as Raimi, Levy and Cuarón for Avengers: Secret Wars.
GeneralZod
GeneralZod - 9/11/2023, 9:12 PM
@NinnesMBC - You honestly think Kevin Feige, who is squirming for the first time in his Marvel Studios career for a series of fumbles these last two years, is going to take a chance and hire a pair of directors who, despite a $90 million budget, couldn't make a CBM good enough to get green-lighted for release? I don't think he would.
NinnesMBC
NinnesMBC - 9/12/2023, 2:27 AM
@GeneralZod - The only project that can be labeled as such would be Love and Thunder which is almost an unanimous agreement in the community and that's pretty much it, unless you're gonna consider their other riskier different approach with Eternals or you meant Quantumania. Nothing else has been a trainwreck for them in terms of box office since they began returning to theaters in 2021 with Shang-Chi. And the only offering that was lukewarm was She-Hulk after a solid beginning for MCU TV. Fact is that they aren't in any way struggling financially with a "series", as you said, of box office bombs. That just isn't their issue and to view it as that is just doing revisionism.

That pair of directors turned around an average IP like Bad Boys 3 into a respectable hit and gathered enough good faith to be allowed to return for the 4th movie that is still yet to be shot. How can you even use as an argument against them that they did not make a good enough movie with a $90 million budget when no one saw the finished product because Zaslav was feeling like being a cheap lowlife exec when he took over WB? That's a really low blow to make for a point and it's jumping into conclusions.

Feige let them direct the 1st episode of Ms. Marvel which sold everyone on the series so yeah I do think he'd take a chance on them if it was possible because that's how he's built the MCU, by not believing there were "characters B and C" but by taking risks with the Russo, Whedon, Gunn, Taika, Branagh, Coogler, Derrickson, Cretton, Watts, etc. Feige isn't squirming and that should be pretty damn obvious to anyone.
JDL
JDL - 9/12/2023, 2:55 AM
@NinnesMBC - Greed ? No. They needed the tax write off cash BADLY and the film would not have covered marketing much less production. It was dead before arrival.
NinnesMBC
NinnesMBC - 9/13/2023, 1:38 AM
@JDL - You could say the same thing to half of the other projects they axed from Max and other networks they owned. That's like saying another Season from Westworld was dead on arrival or the newest episodes of The Minx were also "dead on arrival", yet Starz saw a chance and got it to air on their slate, thus gaining a new audience. What Zaslav did was honestly not just stupid but retarded as frack. The guy makes a ridiculous amount of money a salary just for sitting in his ass, would've been much better to use that as a tax write-off instead.
JDL
JDL - 9/13/2023, 2:09 AM
@NinnesMBC - Starz isn't WB, isn't Disney, isn't Netflix, yadda, yadda, yadda. Their individual financial conditions vary wildly and WB was BROKE. It made decisions in that context. Had it been been part of Amazon for example and gotten solid backing then things would have been different but it wasn't. They deparately needed cash and Batgirl would have lost them more than it would have brought in.
Feralwookiee
Feralwookiee - 9/11/2023, 8:25 PM
He didn't really suggest that Burton's Gotham was "grounded", did he?
I don't agree of course, but it's all a matter of opinion, but I'd like to hear why he believes that.
Forthas
Forthas - 9/11/2023, 8:26 PM
Lost among all of this was the way the Michael Keaton renaissance as Batman came to a screeching and embarrassing halt. While I think he is often overrated as far as embodying Batman, in my opinion he is the third best version and he should have had the opportunity to go out in that role befitting the first on-screen serious interpretation of the Dark Knight.
mountainman
mountainman - 9/11/2023, 10:08 PM
@Forthas - I enjoy both of Keaton’s Batman movies immensely. But he was too damn old in The Flash and I really wouldn’t have wanted him to stick around in the role.

Now if they had done Batman Beyond with him in it, that could have worked. But not as a working superhero Batman.
TheUnworthyThor
TheUnworthyThor - 9/11/2023, 8:34 PM
I firmly believe that it was terrible. I still would have liked to have seen it.
slickrickdesigns
slickrickdesigns - 9/11/2023, 8:39 PM
I would like to see what they did with Batgirl even if it isn’t finished. It couldn’t have been that much worse than Flash, Blue Beetle and Aquashits.
comicfan100
comicfan100 - 9/11/2023, 8:47 PM
Batgirl was the least controversial movie they had with Brendan Frasier as the villain and they scrapped it and put all their hopes behind one of the biggest flops in not only comic book movie history, but cinema history as a whole. Zazzy is a POS
dracula
dracula - 9/11/2023, 8:57 PM
@comicfan100 - id say blue beetle was less controversial
comicfan100
comicfan100 - 9/11/2023, 9:21 PM
@dracula - That too
AnthonyVonGeek
AnthonyVonGeek - 9/11/2023, 8:55 PM
No thanks. I’ll happily enjoy my Bat Woman while they whine and cry about a girl.
dracula
dracula - 9/11/2023, 8:55 PM
Uh more this stuff
?si=JvK3ylhKLhxmBS4o
dagenspear
dagenspear - 9/11/2023, 9:51 PM
@dracula - This is a silly response. Why not let people who basically had their entire movie shelved say as much?
GeneralZod
GeneralZod - 9/11/2023, 8:57 PM
"We didn't get our day in court."



Gimme a break. You actually did get your day in court, and you put up a turd of a film. The turd was so putrid that the studio CEO decided it would be more profitable to take a tax credit than to damage the DC name even further.

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