Fans and filmmakers everywhere were devastated when Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav made the decision to cancel Batgirl. The DCEU movie would have loosely tied in with the events of Tim Burton’s Batman and Batman Returns, bringing back Michael Keaton as an older Bruce Wayne, while Leslie Grace would have played Batgirl. Now David Zaslav states that cancelling the film took “courage.”
As noted via Deadline, Zaslav attempted to explain the accounting that went into his decision. Since he took over Warner Bros following their merger with Discovery, he’s been eagerly restructuring the company. This has includes a number of layoffs and other such decisions that haven’t been popular in the slightest.
Nevertheless, Zaslav insists that they’re necessary:
“The accounting piece is really a misnomer,” Zaslav said. “If we produce a show, a $100-million movie…We’ve spent the $100 million dollars and if we don’t release it. It’s gone. We don’t have any real benefit from it. The question is, should we take certain of these movies and open them in the theater and spend another $30 or $40 million to promote them? And Warner Brothers team and HBO made a number of decisions. They were hard. But when I look at the health of our company today, we needed to make those decisions. And it took real courage.”
Of course, Batgirl was from the only movie cancelled under David Zaslav. A number of other films and television shows were similarly scrapped. This included the animated special Scoob! Holiday Haunt and a Looney Tunes feature film titled Coyote vs Acme. Fortunately, the latter is reportedly being shopped around to other studios for distribution.
As such, we’ll have to see how these decisions and attempts at cost-cutting work out. Hopefully Warner Bros will find itself at a place where fans and filmmakers can both be happy and eager to see what the studio has to deliver next.
Stay tuned to ScreenGeek for any additional updates regarding Warner Bros. Discovery and their CEO, David Zaslav, as we have them. Hopefully we won’t have any other films-turned-tax-write-offs to report in the near future.