Bane broke Batman’s back, but it was the combination of DC’s new direction from Warner Bros. Discovery and exceptionally poor reviews from test groups that appear to have done in Batgirl, resulting in a $90 million loss.
Warner Bros. Discovery, under the leadership of David Zaslav, a man gifted with a name that sounds like a short-run Gotham villain, has been cutting costs at a frenzied pace ever since becoming CEO this spring, with Batgirl becoming one of many projects prematurely canned. He has already ended the fool venture that was CNN+ and has announced that HBO Max will be folded into Discovery+. One can expect more bloodshed from these quarters in the coming months, with a stated goal of trimming $3 billion from the books.
Zaslav is reportedly pursuing a more traditional theater-first approach with DC-franchise films, modeled after Disney’s Marvel success. With their comic counterpart churning out money just as fast as VFX sweatshops can handle, DC has offered audiences inconsistent fare, the franchise suffering from uneven direction and quality and adding a heap of unwelcome virtue-signaling throughout. With Batgirl originally slated for release to streaming platform HBO Max, if one squints one can understand the cut in light of cinematic-release expectations — Batgirl wasn’t made for the big screen.
But really? If the movie was even sufferable, I’m inclined to think that Warner Bros. would have released it in the theaters and on streaming. Comic-book movies can be heinous and make an easy $200 million. Long before Marvel was the $25 billion behemoth it is today, its 2008 release of The Incredible Hulk managed $264 million, and X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) somehow bagged $373 million. DC has but one movie that earned over $1 billion, Aquaman, beloved of David French. Other than that, it’s been slim pickings for a franchise with arguably far more compelling heroes and villains but no unifying vision (Marvel owns the rights to Vision).
As the New York Post reported, Batgirl,
which was doing test screenings for audiences in anticipation of a late 2022 debut, would rank among the most expensive cinematic castoffs ever.
Those tests were said to be so poorly received by moviegoers that the studio decided to cut its losses and run for the sake of the brand’s future. It’s a DC disaster.
“They think an unspeakable ‘Batgirl’ is going to be irredeemable,” the source said.
More Hollywood-friendly (i.e., less inquisitive) outlets like Variety, Esquire, and the Hollywood Reporter chose not to mention the viewer feedback, instead focusing only on Zaslav’s cruel penny-pinching. But a day later, when asked about the Batgirl axing, Zaslav offered, “We’re not going to launch a movie to make a quarter and we’re not going to put a movie out unless we believe in it,” making it clear that Batgirl was dead and worth more to the company as a tax write-off than another flop.
Good for Zaslav. May DC’s new direction eschew the uninspired woke tripe that has been the arch-nemesis of compelling cinema and profitability.