Brendan Fraser has always made it clear that he was disappointed in Warner Bros.’ decision to cancel the release of Batgirl. The film was supposed to be a completed but unreleased DC superhero film starring Leslie Grace as the villain Firefly, starring the Academy Award-winning actor. In a Nov. 19 interview with The Associated Press, Fraser candidly talked about what creators and audiences lost by blocking the film’s release, and what it said about the state of Hollywood.
“This product — sorry, ‘content’ — has become so commercialized that it’s worth burning it down and insuring it rather than trying it out in the marketplace,” Fraser said. “So, with all due respect, we could destroy ourselves.”
Batgirl, directed by Adil El Arbi and Bilal Fallah, was supposed to be the next film in the DC Extended Universe. In addition to Grace and Fraser, the film would have introduced Jacob Scipio as Anthony Bresci and Ivory Aquino as Alicia Yeoh into the series, and would have reprized JK Simmons as Jim Gordon and Michael Keaton as Batman.
Production took place in Scotland from November 2021 to March 2022, but during post-production, Warner Bros. announced that the film would not be released as planned and would be canceled in August 2022 as a cost-cutting measure. Not a single frame of the video has been released.
“The whole movie,” Fraser said. “So there were four production floors in Glasgow. I used to sneak into the art department just for geeky fun.”
The actor went on to talk about the cultural impact the film would have had. “The tragedy is that there’s a generation of little girls who don’t have heroines to look up to and think, ‘She looks like me.'” As Batgirl, Grace would have been the first to star in her own movie, making her one of the few women to star in a solo superhero film in a male-dominated genre.
At the same time, Fraser admitted that older fans would be happy to see Keaton return as the Caped Crusader. “So Michael Keaton is back as Batman. The Batman!” he said. Keaton made his debut as Batman in Tim Burton’s 1989 film Batman, and reprized the role in the 1992 sequel Batman Returns. He ultimately donned the cape and cowl in the DCEU for the first time in 2023’s The Flash.
With Warner Bros. now up for sale and DC’s intellectual property revamped as DC Studios under the leadership of James Gunn and Peter Safran, the chances of Batgirl being released seem even more doubtful than they did two years ago.
Fraser won an Academy Award in 2022 for his performance in The Whale. He currently stars in The Rental Family, and it has been confirmed that he will reprise his role as Rick O’Connell from Hamunaptra in the upcoming fourth installment of the series.
