Batman has given his take on Warner Bros. Discovery shelving the nearly completed $90 million Batgirl feature film.
Michael Keaton assumes the company had a good reason for shelving the film, telling TVLine, “I think it was a business decision; I’m going to assume it was a good one.”
The cancelation of the film, which was set to be released theatrically and on HBO Max, played a role in hindering Keaton’s return to Batman. He previously played the character in Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992). However, Keaton is still set to appear as the character in the upcoming movie The Flash.
Late last week, Warner Bros. Discovery’s CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels also defended the scrapping of the film.
“To me, you know, it’s blown out of proportion a little bit, in terms of the attention externally,” said Wiedenfels at the Bank of America Securities Media, Communications & Entertainment Conference last Thursday of the decision.
“I don’t think it is unusual,” he said of shelving Batgirl. “We are a creative industry, and one of the elements of creativity is that there is judgment and views on what the potential of what a certain piece of [intellectual property] might be.”
The decision to scrap the film caught the industry off guard, with CEO David Zaslav explaining at the company’s second-quarter earnings call in early August that Warner Bros. Discovery wouldn’t release a movie just to have it out in the world.