Brendan Fraser Is Still Angry Over Shelved ‘Batgirl’ Movie

Brendan Fraser has opened up about the shelving of the Batgirl movie, calling it a major loss for young fans.

The film, which was completed but never released, starred Leslie Grace as Batgirl and featured Michael Keaton, J.K. Simmons, Jacob Scipio, Fraser, and Ivory Aquino. It was directed by Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah and written by Christina Hodson. The movie was planned as part of the DC Extended Universe and produced for HBO Max by Kristin Burr.

Fraser told the Associated Press, “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.’”

He also criticized the decision to scrap the film, saying, “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.”

The project had been in development since 2017, originally with Joss Whedon attached to write and direct.

After he left, Hodson rewrote the script, and El Arbi and Fallah were brought on as directors in 2021. Leslie Grace was cast as Batgirl that summer, and Michael Keaton reprised his role as Batman from earlier films and the DCEU movie The Flash (2023). Filming ran from November 2021 to March 2022 in Glasgow, Scotland.

In August 2022, Warner Bros. Discovery announced the movie would not be released. While some reports suggested negative test screenings played a role, with Collider describing the film as “a huge disappointment [that] looked cheap in comparison to other films”, Variety and other sources said the decision was mainly financial. The film’s budget had grown from $70 million to $90 million, and the studio reportedly saw writing it off for a tax benefit as the most cost-effective move.

The shelving of a completed, big-budget film shocked fans, commentators, and even some executives. Lawmakers in the U.S. questioned the WarnerMedia–Discovery merger, citing the cancellation as an example of the company’s business practices. The directors, El Arbi and Fallah, tried to save some footage but were unsuccessful.

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