Following Warner Bros. Discovery‘s bombshell decision to indefinitely shelve Batgirl instead of letting it stream on HBO Max as originally planned, more and more details have been trickling out about Batgirl‘s fate. As the shocking move kicked off weeks of turmoil at the newly formed entertainment conglomerate (cancellations and the removal of streaming shows are still happening as of this writing), Batgirl directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah have been scrambling to sift through the wreckage. While the two have been politely diplomatic about the unprecedented situation, they are starting to speak out about watching their hard work seemingly vanish into thin air.
In a new interview with the French-based SKRIPT, El Arbi and Fallah reportedly revealed that they tried to access the Batgirl footage and record it on their phones after Warner Bros. Discovery pulled the plug because “they wanted to save some money.” However, the directors were shocked to learn that they were already blocked from the servers. For even more salt in the wound, they could no longer access footage of Michael Keaton as Batman, which particularly stung. Via IndieWire:
“We have nothing,” Fallah said. “Adil called me and said, ‘Shoot everything on your phone.’ I went on the server, and everything was blocked.”
El Arbi recalled, “We were like, ‘F*cking sh*t! All the scenes with Batman in them! Sh*t!’”
But the duo are still holding out hope for their superhero movie. “Seeing all the support on Twitter, and even from big directors Edgar Wright and James Gunn, who sent us supportive messages, it was comforting,” Fallah said.
The filmmaking team also revealed that Batgirl still needs to be finished, and for it to see the light of day, the studio would need to let them complete the final product.
“[‘Batgirl]’ cannot be released in its current state,” El Arbi said. “Before it’s released one day, there would be a lot of work still to do. Just like the ‘Snyder Cut.’ There’s no VFX, we still had to shoot some scenes. So if [Warner Bros. Discovery] wanted us to release the ‘Batgirl’ movie they would need to give us the means to do it, to finish it properly with our vision.”
Considering how much of a headache the Snyder Cut turned out to be, fans should probably not get their hopes up on the directors’ wishes. That’s especially considering Warner Bros. Discovery is trying to cut an astronomical amount of costs and seems to have no love for the Zack Snyder vanity project.
(Via IndieWire)
