Batgirl Directors Say Their Footage Was Deleted From WB’s Servers
When the word came down that HBO Max’s Batgirl was cancelled, directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah were in Morocco for Adil’s wedding when they learned that they had no film to come home to. Via Deadline, the Batgirl directors also made a rude discovery when they tried to save some of their footage from the Warner Bros. servers. According to Adil & Bilall, Warner Bros. had already deleted the Batgirl footage by the time the announcement was made.
“I went on the server… Everything was gone,” said Fallah while speaking with the French media outlet, Skript. “We were like, ‘F***ing s***!’ All the scenes with Batman in them!,” added El Arbi.
The filmmakers went on to explain why it’s unlikely that Batgirl will resurface in any form without the studio’s support.
“It cannot be released in its current state,” said El Arbi. “There’s no VFX… we still had some scenes to shoot. So if one day they want us to release the Batgirl movie, they’d have to give us the means to do it. To finish it properly with our vision.”
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Additionally, El Arbi noted that “The guys from Warners told us, ‘it was not a talent problem from our part or the actress, or even the quality of the movie…’ They told us it was a strategic change. There was new management, and they wanted to save some money.”
Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslov and company reportedly got a $20 million tax write off by not releasing Batgirl. But considering that the movie cost $90 million to make, that’s $70 million that the studio will never see again. It’s also one of the biggest write offs in Hollywood’s history.
You can watch the full video with Adil & Bilall below.
Would you like to see Batgirl finished someday? Let us know in the comment section below!
Recommended Reading: Batgirl and the Birds Of Prey Vol. 1
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