Michael Keaton is the latest cast member associated with Warner Bros. Discovery’s ill-fated Batgirl movie to speak out about the project’s demise.
The Dopesick actor was present in the Emmys press room and answered some questions.
“I think it was a business decision; I’m going to assume it was a good one,” Keaton said of his reaction to the news of the cancellation in response to a question from TV Line.
“I really don’t know, I don’t follow that that much.”
Keaton was unsure about when viewers might see him step into his Bruce Wayne role again.
“I don’t know. We’ll see,” he told the outlet, noting that returning to the role “was great, it was fun,” he said. “I really have no idea.”
Batgirl was scrapped in August, despite being close to complete.
“We have done a reset” Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav said last month during an investors call.
“There will be a team with a 10-year plan focusing just on DC,” he said, revealing that the DC movies will now be exclusively launched in theaters.
Batgirl was said to be a HBO Max exclusive.
“It’s very similar to the structure that Alan Horn and Bob Iger put together effectively with [Marvel Studios chief] Kevin Feige at Disney.”
Zaslav explained that “our conclusion is that with expensive direct-to-streaming movies — in terms of how people are consuming them on the platform, how often people buy a service for it, and how it gets nourished over time — there is no comparison to what happens when you launch a film in the theaters.”
Directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah recently revealed that they were locked out of the movie in an interview with SKRIPT.
“It was not a talent problem on our part, the actress, or even the quality of the movie,” El Arbi said of the canceled movie.
“We were right in the middle of editing, there was still a lot of work to be done!”
“It was not like the movie was finished But they told us it was a strategic change.”
“New management. And they could save some cash.”
“Adil [El Arbi] called me and told me, ‘Go ahead! Shoot everything on your phone!’ I went on the server… And everything was blocked,” Fallah said.
“There was no way to access the film. We were: ‘Fucking shit! All the scenes with Batman we didn’t get to keep!”
Paul Dailly is the Associate Editor for TV Fanatic. Follow him on Twitter.
