Batgirl was sadly canceled by DC Studios before it could ever see the light of day. Despite this, the film directors have revealed their inspiration from Christopher Nolan and Tim Burton’s Batman movies.
Batgirl was a casualty of an intersection of regime changes at DC Studios and Warner Bros. Discovery, ultimately ending in the film being completely canned. Michael Keaton would’ve returned as Batman alongside Leslie Grace’s Barbara Gordon and Brendan Fraser as Firefly. According to director Adil El Arbi, much of the film’s action sequences were done with miniatures like Tim Burton’s Batman:
“It was really a blend between Nolan and Burton,” El Arbi told Yahoo! Entertainment. “Gotham City was a more realistic world, and the story was very straightforward and emotional. It was more of an actor’s movie without a lot of visual effects.”
“We don’t really like CGI, so we used a lot of miniatures. There was this one great action sequence where a truck crashed into a tunnel and we did it with miniatures like Burton did in Batman. It remains the coolest thing we’ve ever done in movies – it was old-school filmmaking and we’ll do it again!”
“We had to keep the budget low, so it was a very grounded story. But the fact that the budget wasn’t that high already would have helped it be a success. People do love the Bat family: they love Batgirl, they love Gotham City, they love Michael Keaton and Brendan Fraser gave an Oscar-worthy performance in the movie.”
“[The] movie was supposed to be for streaming, which allows you freedoms that you don’t get in theaters. If it was a theatrical movie, we might have needed to have had bigger action sequences than we had. But we’ll never know!”
It’s no shock that Brendan Fraser gave an Oscar-worthy performance, given the Batgirl and Doom Patrol actor would go on to win an Oscar for his performance in The Whale. It seems as though every piece of information fans get about the film proves Warner Bros. Discovery made a mistake. Though with James Gunn and Peter Safran taking over DC Studios, it’s unlikely the film will ever see the light of day.
Is Leslie Grace coming back as Batgirl?
Reports at the time of the Batgirl cancellation indicated that Warner Bros. Pictures Group co-chiefs Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy are considering having Leslie Grace appear as Barbara Gordon in other DC Comics movies. For now, Grace’s Batgirl future remains in doubt as James Gunn and Peter Safran continue mapping out the future of the DC Universe.
Michael Keaton’s Batman, one of the main characters of Batgirl, is set to appear in Ezra Miller’s first cinematic solo outing as The Flash, which is currently slated to hit theaters in Summer 2023. He’s also supposed to be in Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, but his cameo may have been cut following a recent round of release date shifts.
Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah were the directors of the Batgirl movie, working from a script by Christina Hodson, the writer behind Birds of Prey and The Flash. Its cast also included J. K. Simmons as James Gordon, Jacob Scipio as Anthony Bressi, Ivory Aquino as Alysia Yeoh and Brendan Fraser as Firefly. Rebecca Front, Corey Johnson and Ethan Kai were also on board in undisclosed role.
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