Director Kevin Smith addresses the cancellation of Leslie Grace's Batgirl movie with an honest critique of Warner Bros.'s decision to cancel the film. The director has worked on a number of DC Comics projects, including comic book stories, video games, television, and animation projects. Batgirl would have featured Grace, Michael Keaton, Brendan Frasier, JK Simmons, and Ivory Aquino.

Originally announced in 2017, Adil El Arbi and Bilall Falah's Batgirl would have seen Grace take on the role of Barbara Gordon, the daughter of Simmons' Commissioner Gordon. Grace's Batgirl would have teamed up with Keaton's Batman and faced off against Brendan Fraser's pyromaniac villain Firefly, but in a shocked announcement, the film was suddenly scrapped in August 2022, with parent company Warner Bros. Discovery stating the film would not release in any form. While Batgirl directors El Arbi and Falah shared their own responses alongside Grace following the news breaking, another filmmaker with a history with DC Comics has shared his own honest input on the situation.

Related: Why Warner Bros Cancelled DC's Batgirl Movie

In a video shared on his YouTube channel, Kevin Smith stated that Warner Bros.'s cancellation of Grace's Batgirl film was a bad decision, regardless of the film's supposed quality. The writer and filmmaker then addressed the suggestions that the cancellation occurred due to the film looking cheap, stating that audiences would have still watched the film, even if it only looked slightly better than a CW/DC project. Following his brutally honest critiques, Smith suggested there must be other factors in play. Read his comments, below:

"It's an incredibly bad look to cancel the Latina Batgirl movie. I don't give a s--t if the movie was absolute f--king dogs--t man, and I guarantee you that it wasn't. The two directors who directed that movie did a couple of episodes of Ms. Marvel, and that was a wonderful f--king show, y'know. Great looking and they had more money to do Batgirl than they had to do an episode of Ms. Marvel and stuff...

"And also, I love all the CW shows, and the CW shows show their budgetary constraints, and the big complaint they said here was 'Oh well it isn't big enough to be a f--king theatrical release, so... It looked too cheap because it was a 90 million dollar movie.' How do you make a cheap looking 90 million dollar f--king movie? But if it looked anything, like, slightly better than an episode of f--king Arrow, why couldn't we have seen that? It feels like there's more than just 'We're gonna save 20 million dollars,' like, I don't know, man."

Batgirl Leslie Grace Barbara Gordon Batman

While Smith is wary and offered reasonable arguments against Warner Bros.'s justifications for Batgirl's cancellation, Warner Bros. Discovery's CEO defended Batgirl's cancellation during the company's Q2 earnings call, sharing further insight into the decision. During the call, current CEO David Zaslav claimed the film wasn't believed in by the studio, and potentially wouldn't earn a quarter of its cost. Furthermore, the CEO also stated that DC's current goal was to "grow" and "protect the DC brand".

Both DC fans and industry voices like Smith have reacted to Warner Bros.'s shocking decision, fueling much discussion. With other DC projects facing their own troubled productions, Smith's wariness to Batgirl's cancellation over those is a view shared by many. Furthermore, the film's test screening score was reportedly comparable to Black Adam, whose theatrical release is still confirmed, throwing claims that the film's quality is what ultimately led to to its cancellation into question. While Warner Bros. is likely to remain tight-lipped, there will continue to be questions and debate over Batgirl's fate.

Next: Other DC Movies We're Worried About After Batgirl's Cancellation

Source: Kevin Smith

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