Warner Bros. Discover CEO David Zaslav's decision to scrap the Batgirl movie has not sat well with anyone, and even those associated with the studio have begun to voice their displeasure with the move.
Clerks 3 director Kevin Smith, who has worked with Warner Bros. on numerous occasions and recently helmed several episodes of The CW's Supergirl, put Zaslav and co. on blast during the latest episode of his Hollywood Babble-On YouTube show, expressing his bewilderment that Batgirl has been given the axe while the studio is still committed to releasing The Flash.
“It’s an incredibly bad look to cancel the Latina Batgirl movie,” Smith said. “I don’t give a shit if the movie was absolute f*cking dog sh*t – I guarantee you that it wasn’t. The two directors [Bilall Fallah and Adil El Arbi] who directed that movie did a couple of episodes of Ms. Marvel, and it was a wonderful [frick]ing show and they had more money to do Batgirl than they had to do an episode of Ms. Marvel and stuff.”
Smith makes a valid point. While we have heard some negative reports from the movie's (single) test-screening, most of the feedback has been mixed/positive, and the feeling is that any problems could have been ironed out with minimum cost and effort. It's impossible to know for sure without having seen the film first-hand, of course, but could it really have been that bad?
“That is the baffling thing,” he added. “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 is obviously referring to star Ezra Miller, who has been accused of all manner of heinous things over the past few weeks.
There are already numerous fan-campaigns for WBD to release Batgirl, but it seems highly unlikely, at least for the foreseeable future.