The directors of the Batgirl film abruptly shelved by Warner Bros. last year have shared their reaction to fellow DC title The Flash, describing their experience watching the film as “sad.”
Filmmakers Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, who co-directed Batgirl prior to its shock cancellation last August, spoke of The Flash in a recent interview with Insider. “We watched it and we were sad,” El Arbi said. “We felt we could have been part of the whole thing.”
Batgirl was intended to premiere directly on streaming service HBO Max, but was pulled from Warner Bros. Discovery’s release schedule to “reflect our leadership’s strategic shift”, the production company said at the time. Batgirl was set to star Leslie Grace in the title role, and was in the final stages of post-production prior to its cancellation.
“We didn’t get the chance to show Batgirl to the world and let the audience judge for themselves,” El Arbi told Insider. “The audience really is our ultimate boss and should be the deciders of if something is good or bad.”
Fallah, meanwhile, described Batgirl’s cancellation as the “biggest disappointment of our careers”, particularly given his “fanboy” affinity for Michael Keaton in the role of Bruce Wayne. “Just to be in the presence of Keaton as Batman, that’s just a privilege and an honour,” Fallah said. “It’s a bittersweet feeling.”
The duo went on to compare Batgirl to The Flash, which was directed by Andrés Muschietti and hit cinemas in June. El Arbi said their film was “very different” from The Flash, which contains “a big fantasy component” while Batgirl is “more grounded.” The director likened Batgirl to Tim Burton’s take on Gotham City in 1989’s Batman.
DC reportedly shelved Batgirl to reposition its focus on theatrical releases and blockbusters, with the studio’s new co-CEO Peter Safran later explaining that while there were “incredibly talented people” involved in the film, it was ultimately “not releasable.”
“The film that I got to see was incredible,” Grace said in response earlier this year. “Even though I would’ve loved to share that with the rest of the world, nothing can take that experience away from us.”
In their own statement, El Arbi and Bilall Fallah had said they were “shocked and saddened” by Batgirl’s cancellation, while holding out hope that audiences might “one day” see the film.
Batgirl was one of multiple DC projects to be reconsidered following the announcement of Safran and James Gunn as co-chairs of the studio last October. Production on Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman 3 was reportedly paused amid the change in management, while actor Henry Cavill was replaced as Superman following talks with Safran and Gunn.
“Building the next ten years of story takes time [and] we’re still just beginning,” Gunn wrote on Twitter in response to the studio shake-ups. “We know we are not going to make every single person happy every step of the way, but we can promise everything we do is done in the service of the STORY.”