During a Q2 earnings call on Thursday (August 4), Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav gave some more insight behind his shocking decision to shelve Batgirl, a nearly completed, $90 million film starring Dominican-American actress Leslie Grace (In the Heights) in the title superhero role.
“We’re not going to launch a movie until it’s ready,” Zaslav said when asked specifically about Batgirl getting canceled. “We’re not going to launch a movie to make a quarter, and we’re not going to put a movie out unless we believe in it.”
On Tuesday (August 2), Zaslav broke the internet when reports started rolling in that Batgirl, which wrapped production five months ago, would not be released on HBO Max or at theaters and that the studio planned on scrapping the film entirely, so it could take a tax write-off and recoup the cost of the movie.
Zaslav defended his decision by discussing the shift in focus that the studio was taking with the merger of HBO Max and Discovery+ into a single streaming service that will launch next summer. He also talked about a “10-year plan focusing just on DC.” Warner Bros. owns the Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman properties.
“These are brands that are known everywhere in the world,” he said. “And as part of that, we’re going to focus on quality. DC is something that we think we could make better, and we’re focused on it now.”
He added: “The objective is to grow the DC brand, to grow the DC characters. But also, our job is to protect the DC brand. And that’s what we’re going to do.”
The current chaos at Warner Bros. Discovery has started to make fans wonder about other films they believed the studio would produce that now seem to be in limbo. This includes a solo movie for Supergirl, which would’ve starred Colombian-American actress Sasha Calle in the title role. Supergirl will still make an appearance in The Flash, which debuts next summer.