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Author Topic: Completed Batgirl movie gets cancelled - for real! - and why it is important  (Read 8311 times)

Reckall

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It sounds strange, to me, the need to specify that "cancelled" is meant in its traditional sense and not "as a result of a twitter mob". We live in strange times.

"Batgirl" the show was a dumpster fire. I won't go into the details here but it was one of those pinnacles of wokeness that defined the "get woke, go broke" experience. Warner Bros forged on by ordering a Batgirl movie anyway. I mean, it featured a black Batgirl! (Leslie Grace)

Now WB is under new ownership and the new masters are not amused. They watched the finished movie (it lacks only some post-production work), and decided that it is "irredeemable" and will be buried.

Now, this is astounding. It was a 70 millions movie (it would seem that the budget grew out of control to $90-100 however) with Brendan Fraser, J.K. Simmons and, interestingly, Michael Keaton playing an older Batman. Today if you have a dreck in your hands you can still try to recoup something by putting it on your streaming service (HBO Max in this case). Some speculate that to cancel Batgirl entirely would allow the studio to "take a tax write-down". This still leads to the question of how bad can it be. Is it worse than "The Room"? ??? 

Anyway, two take-aways:

First, the usual suspects are already salty. #SaveBatgirl is already on Twitter. This movie had a transgender best friend! And so on.

All of the above, of course, must happen with someone else's money, as I didn't read "We will recoup your losses via GoFundMe." No one is saying "If it is true that this movie sux so much it will be black heroines and transgender friends who will take the fall, so we should be grateful." No, the movie must come out.

But it wont. It is an interesting event. "It doesn't matter if the woke crowds are restless, we won't lose any more money". Not losing money to the wokes is an unprecedented strong signal that arrives right when we are starting to see a slight move towards neutrality by, at least, some trades. For example, some of the shills who are shilling "The Rings of Power" are starting to say "Well, Tolkien fans are a bit perplexed..." Not much, but we had "toxic fans blah blah" for months. I'm seeing other small cracks here and there. We will see.

Anyway, the new owners of DCU are looking at what they have inherited from the previous management and they are seeing: "Batgirl" (killed); "The Flash" (with Ezra Miller; you can't reshoot that, so you need either to kill it too or to somehow move the spotlight away from Ezra Miller's behavior); and Aquaman 2 (with Amber Heard, that so successful frontrunner for the #MeToo movement; "Remove Amber Heard from Aquaman 2" has 4.5 millions signatures on Change.org; there are strong hints that she is being re-casted and we will see Emilia Clarke instead).

What an inheritance from the woke era of the DCU, uh? And someone is starting to pay attention.
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HappyDaze

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Minor correction: Batwoman was the show that got canceled. Batgirl is the film. These are different characters.

Reckall

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Minor correction: Batwoman was the show that got canceled. Batgirl is the film. These are different characters.

You are right. Batwoman was still a dumpster fire toh :)
For every idiot who denounces Ayn Rand as "intellectualism" there is an excellent DM who creates a "Bioshock" adventure.

HappyDaze

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Minor correction: Batwoman was the show that got canceled. Batgirl is the film. These are different characters.

You are right. Batwoman was still a dumpster fire toh :)
Absolutely. I made it through three episodes and walked away, but that's only because I typically give anything 3-5 episodes before I walk. It got the minimum.

Reckall

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Minor correction: Batwoman was the show that got canceled. Batgirl is the film. These are different characters.

You are right. Batwoman was still a dumpster fire toh :)
Absolutely. I made it through three episodes and walked away, but that's only because I typically give anything 3-5 episodes before I walk. It got the minimum.

I walked away when in the first season she said "Batman's equipment needs to be upgraded, because I'm a woman". I'm paraphrasing but that was the idea. Episode one IIRC.

I knew that Ruby Rose ran away after season one and she was OF COURSE re-casted with a black actress (edit: this is why I mistook the movie for the show). Then the show sank. If anything, it makes for two woke/race-swap fiascoes out of two.
« Last Edit: August 03, 2022, 08:44:18 AM by Reckall »
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Lurkndog

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I didn't know there had been a change in management at WB. That's actually good news.

I suspect they might be hoping for fans to get curious and petition to see the Batgirl movie like they did the Snyder Cut of Justice League.

At the very least, it is encouraging to see that the new management has better taste than the old.

I expect the Flash movie to come out, but I doubt they keep Ezra Miller on as the Flash after that.

Given that the Flash movie is using the Flashpoint storyline, which is a "time travel creates dark universe until it is finally undone" storyline, they could recast the role at the end of the movie. The good timeline is restored, the bad timeline is banished, and Flash is now Grant Gustin. :)




Reckall

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I didn't know there had been a change in management at WB. That's actually good news.

I suspect they might be hoping for fans to get curious and petition to see the Batgirl movie like they did the Snyder Cut of Justice League.

At the very least, it is encouraging to see that the new management has better taste than the old.

The master plan of the old regime was to wokefise the whole DCU, with the new "holy trinity" composed by Wonder Woman, Supergirl and Batgirl. Then Warner was bought by Discovery and... let's say that the new management took a flamethrower and started to torch projects of all kinds. Some say that they are "anti-woke" but, from the rumbles I heard, they are simply "anti-bad" with no political inclinations. The fact that 90% of the things being canned is woke is only a byproduct - which still tells a lot about the quality of woke products.

However, totally shelving a $70-100 millions movie (reportedly finished) is still amazing. Apparently, if "Batgirl" came out, no matter the quality, the DCU would have been forced to follow the woke rails. They say that not even reshoots could have avoided this. The new management wants to basically reset the DCU, bring Ben Affleck and Henry Cavill back (Ben Affleck's Batman was already inserted in "Aquaman 2" in reshoots), fix the Flash with a new actor and move on.

Midnight Edge just put out a nice summary of the situation. The changes for Warner are bigger than that but this is about the DCU.

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VisionStorm

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It's always reassuring to hear about all the damage that wokeness has wrought on the movie industry. It was a horrible industry to begin with and they've been pushing this cultural rot on the public for years now, and gaslighting them when they dare not like what's been served to them. So it's nice to hear they've been facing the consequences with significant monetary loss and having their long term projects ruined. Sometimes karma seems to happen.

Ghostmaker

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Reckall isn't overstating things. It's one thing to kill a project in progress, but my understanding is that this film was 'in the can', i.e. done -- post production and all.

Shelving it essentially states 'It's a loss and we know it'. It might get a DTV release -- maybe. A number of films were delayed thanks to the Kung Flu, but I'm not aware of any that have been outright shitcanned like this.

HappyDaze

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I didn't know there had been a change in management at WB. That's actually good news.

I suspect they might be hoping for fans to get curious and petition to see the Batgirl movie like they did the Snyder Cut of Justice League.

At the very least, it is encouraging to see that the new management has better taste than the old.

I expect the Flash movie to come out, but I doubt they keep Ezra Miller on as the Flash after that.

Given that the Flash movie is using the Flashpoint storyline, which is a "time travel creates dark universe until it is finally undone" storyline, they could recast the role at the end of the movie. The good timeline is restored, the bad timeline is banished, and Flash is now Grant Gustin. :)
And it's not like Grant doesn't have an opening in his schedule with the cancelation of the Flash series (after a shortened 9th season).

Reckall

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Shelving it essentially states 'It's a loss and we know it'. It might get a DTV release -- maybe.

The new management stated that the movie will not be released in any form, not even DTV. This leads to two possible way to see it: it is leaked (it would still not be canon anymore) or a successful petition (I don't see this happening but if it does then they would simply market it as a "what if" - and thus not canon anyway).

I was never interested in this movie. Now I am :)
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Ruprecht

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DC needs a version of the what if...

Release it as What if Batgirl were woke as Hell. Add joel and the Robots mocking the thing to make sure the joke slams home.
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Ghostmaker

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Slight revision to my comment earlier: the Batgirl movie was not entirely completed. It had finished principal photography and was in post-production.

But evidently it did amazingly bad with test audiences. Like, 'gunning for a Razzie sweep' bad.

Mistwell

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The fact that 90% of the things being canned is woke is only a byproduct - which still tells a lot about the quality of woke products.

I think the evidence is extremely thin that this has anything to do with woke-anything, and everything to do with a massive immediate change away from the hybrid streaming/theater release (or streaming-only) plan they were engaged in.

And the proof of that is what you just stated is incorrect. TWO movies were just canned at the same time by the same people, not one. The first is this movie. But the second is a $40M production of a new Scooby Doo animated sequel: Scoob! Holiday Haunt. Which was also finished except some final post production, and everyone behind the scenes says was looking good, and there was no woke-anything relating to it.

One reason given for both cancellations, despite both being essentially complete and sunk-cost, is that WB wants to immediately end to same-day-and-date release hybrid model which angered a lot of their top creative talent and which was sucking down way too much of the profits. And contractually they cannot just release either to theaters-only without also releasing them for streaming on the same day, unless they do what they just did and shelve them.

Which in itself is shocking and frankly bigger news than all this woke stuff. If a major production and distribution company has just committed to theatrical release over streaming in this loud and costly a manner, that's going to send shockwaves through the industry. If they're willing to soak about $150M in one day just to deny the streaming companies that content, damn that is sending a message. It's just that the message it's sending isn't the one you're focusing on.

Maybe buying some AMC stock right now isn't such a bad idea. Oh look, it's up nearly 10% today.
« Last Edit: August 03, 2022, 04:22:24 PM by Mistwell »

hedgehobbit

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Slight revision to my comment earlier: the Batgirl movie was not entirely completed. It had finished principal photography and was in post-production.

But evidently it did amazingly bad with test audiences. Like, 'gunning for a Razzie sweep' bad.

Yeah, many people are assuming that WB is just throwing $70 million away but we don't know the estimated costs associated with re-shoots to fix the story and for completing the CGI. The costs to get this movie into a presentable state might be more than the estimated box office earnings.

So it's either lose money now or lose money later.