Oscar winner Brendan Fraser is opening up about the canceled “Batgirl” movie. Fraser, known for his work in “The Mummy” and “The Whale,” played the villain Firefly in the DC Comics adaptation alongside Leslie Grace (“In the Heights”) as Barbara Gordon/Batgirl. Unfortunately, after the movie was completed, Warner Bros. canceled it in August of 2022 for a tax write-off. It will likely never see the light of day.
While promoting his movie “Rental Family,” Fraser spoke with the Associated Press and the topic of “Batgirl” came up. While Michael Keaton, who returned as Batman in the movie, didn’t seem to care very much that it was shelved, Fraser has a different view. For him, that decision was a damning commentary on the state of the industry. Here’s what he had to say about it:
“A whole movie. I mean, there were four floors of production in Glasgow. I was sneaking into the art department just to geek out. The tragedy of that is that there’s a generation of little girls who don’t have a heroine to look up to and go, ‘She looks like me.’ I mean, Michael Keaton came back as Batman. The Batman! The product — I’m sorry, ‘content’ — is being commodified to the extent that it’s more valuable to burn it down and get the insurance on it than to give it a shot in the marketplace. I mean, with respect, we could blight itself.”
Fraser is no stranger to the DC Universe, having previously played Robot Man on the “Doom Patrol” TV series. But getting to play a big villain in a big-budget movie is another prospect entirely. Any actor would be within their rights to be angry about something like this.
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Brendan Fraser isn’t hiding his feelings about Batgirl being shelved
Brendan Fraser as Cliff Steele sitting next to Robot Man in Doom Patrol – Warner Bros.
Beyond any selfish reasons, Fraser sees the shelving as a bigger issue. The fact that it made more sense for Warner Bros. to scrap a completed $90 million movie for a tax write-off rather than release it remains hard to fathom even three years removed. Directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, amazingly enough, said they would work with WB again, despite the fact that the studio essentially threw something they worked hard on in the trash.
“They all say really good things about it. But the thing about it was, it was screened in a garden variety test screening. It was a director’s cut. First cut. It wasn’t finished,” Fraser previously said of “Batgirl” during an interview on “The Howard Stern Show” in 2023. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t eat half-baked cake. I don’t want to see something that’s not ready yet. And the sad thing is, I don’t know if it was judged on merit. It wasn’t shown in the best light that it could have been.”
DC Studios co-head Peter Safran previously said “Batgirl” was “not releasable.” But as Fraser points out, the movie wasn’t even finished. There have been numerous accounts over the years of rough test screenings for movies that eventually came out and were quite good. Be that as it may, this movie’s fate has been sealed.
Then again, stranger things have happened. Warner Bros. was going to do something similar with “Coyote vs. Acme” before Ketchup Entertainment rescued it and will release it in theaters next year. Who knows? Maybe, just maybe, this relic of DC’s past will see the light of day. Just don’t hold your breath.
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Read the original article on SlashFilm.
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