After news broke last week that HBO Max had shelved the upcoming Batgirl movie, many writers and directors have been coming to the defense of directing duo Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah. Marvel president Kevin Feige reached out to the directors, praising their work on both Batgirl and Ms. Marvel, while Edgar Wright and Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn also sent their love. Meanwhile, Kevin Smith is taking a different approach.
The director, who is well underway promoting the upcoming Clerks III, took to his series Hollywood Babble-On with Ralph Garman to discuss the controversial move of HBO Max canceling the movie’s release while it was nearly completed and had several high-profile cameos.
“It’s an incredibly bad look to cancel the Latina Batgirl movie,” Smith said to a sea of applause (via New York Post). “I don’t give a sh*t if the movie was absolutely f*cking dogsh*t, and I guarantee you it wasn’t.”
He added, “The two directors who directed that movie did a couple of episodes of Ms. Marvel and it was a wonderful f*cking show. And they had more money to do Batgirl than Ms. Marvel.” It was previously reported that Batgirl cost upwards of $90 million, a steep increase from their original budget of $70 million (reports claimed that the budget increased due to COVID production delays).
Smith is historically a huge DC fan, and the director also confirmed that HBO Max has canceled his highly-anticipated adaptation of Strange Adventures. Though maybe with some more DVD sales, he will eventually get the show back on track.
