Batgirl directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah reveal that while they enjoyed watching The Flash, they couldn’t help but feel saddened by the fact that their movie was scrapped.
Speaking to Insider, the filmmakers lamented their scrapped superhero flick, noting that they really wanted to have their place in the DC Universe. “We watched it and we were sad,” El Arbi said. “We love director Andy Muschietti and his sister Barbara, who produced the movie. But when we watched it, we felt we could have been part of the whole thing. We didn’t get the chance to show Batgirl to the world and let the audience judge for themselves. Because the audience really is our ultimate boss and should be the deciders of if something is good or bad, or if something should be seen or not.”
El Arbi and Fallah also addressed how Batgirl would have been a different kind of DC movie, explaining that it would have been a stark contrast in comparison to The Flash. “Our movie was very different than The Flash,” Adil said. “That has a big fantasy component, ours was more grounded. More like Tim Burton’s Gotham City.” Similar to Burton’s classic take on the franchise, Batgirl would have also seen the return of Michael Keaton’s Bruce Wayne, something that The Flash also included.
Another Chance for Batgirl?
“Our love for DC, Batman, Batgirl, Gotham City, it’s so big that, as fans, we could never say no to another project,” Adil concluded. “If we got another chance to be part of it, we’d do it. We didn’t get our day in court. We still want to make our case.” In late 2022, Warner Bros. Discovery shocked fans when it announced that it was terminating Batgirl despite the fact that the movie had finished shooting and was in the middle of post-production.
Many have speculated on why the film was scrapped so deep into development with some hypothesizing that the studio was looking to use it as a tax write-off. Others believe the movie’s story wouldn’t have fit within the canon of the DC Extended Universe which was later rebranded to the DC Universe following the employment of James Gunn and Peter Safran as the co-CEOs of DC Studios. Batgirl would have starred Leslie Grace as the titular character who embarks upon a quest to prove herself as a hero by bringing down the villainous Firefly, played by Brendan Fraser.
The Flash is now available on Digital, Blu-ray and DVD.
Source: Insider