A lot of people were shocked when Warner Bros. Discovery announced that it was shelving its $90 million Batgirl feature—including Batgirl, herself, Leslie Grace. The actor as well as Brendan Fraser, who played Batgirl’s foe in the film, opened up recently about their experience finding out the movie would never be released.
“I found out just like the rest of you,” Grace told Variety. “And then my phone just started blowing up.”
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Fraser was equally incredulous when he heard about the fate of the feature. “I thought I was getting punked, but it checked out,” he said. “Then came hysterical laughter like, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me?’ I know that the filmmakers and producers were expecting to hear from the studio about the film, and the anticipation was, ‘How do we broaden the movie out to take it from a streaming format to a theatrical release?’ But as we all know, it was the complete opposite. When we were expecting XYZ amount of support and money to expand scenes—to do pickup shots and those kinds of things—that was a gut punch. But then we learned that it was in the interest of writing down some debt? That part really stung.”
The news stung a lot of folks, especially since it’s difficult to imagine this happening to another movie in the DC universe where someone besides their first Latina superhero was starring.
“What I find most lamentable is that now a whole generation of little girls are going to have to wait longer to see a Batgirl and say, ‘Hey, she looks like me,’” Fraser also told Variety. “That makes me sad. I know how good [Grace] was. And I know what this would mean to so many people.”
Grace was more magnanimous than Fraser, although she did admit she “deflated like a balloon” when she heard the news. She also shared that when she met with Warner Bros. Film Group CEOs Pam Abdy and Mike De Luca about the company’s move that they “weren’t really specific on anything creative in terms of what they felt about the film and how it would’ve hurt DC creatively.”
Grace did get to see the movie in its current state, which was far from complete. “The film that I got to see—the scenes that were there—was incredible,” she said. “There was definitely potential for a good film, in my opinion.”
Grace also had words of wisdom for the young girls who would have gotten to see themselves in her Batgirl performance but are left instead with the news of the feature’s cancellation:
Your journey is not a mistake. That everything in your journey can be learned from, can be transformative, can be inspirational and aspirational for someone that you might not even know. I’ve learned that you can make the choice to learn from things and transform it into something that’s positive for you, or you can be down in the dumps, I would say “Just keep going no matter what the obstacle is. If you have a passion for something, don’t let anything that stands in your way tell you that you aren’t worthy, capable, or have the potential to fulfill what you know you’re capable of doing.”
Batgirl will sadly never make its way to a screen near you.
