‘Batgirl’ Filmmakers On Fallout From WBD Axing DC Pic: Studio Promptly Took All Their Footage
deadline.comWeeks after the HBO Max DC movie Batgirl was canceled by the David Zaslav run Warner Bros. Discovery, the pic’s directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah said in an interview with French outlet Skript that the studio promptly prevented them from accessing the pic’s footage after unplugging the movie during post.“Fallah said. “I went on the server… Everything was gone.”El Arbi added: “We were like, ‘F***ing shit!’ All the scenes with Batman in them!”As Deadline first told you, both filmmakers were in Morocco for El Arbi’s wedding when they first learned about Batgirl‘s bad news.“The guys from Warners told us, ‘it was not a talent problem from our part or the actress, or even the quality of the movie,’” said El Arbi.He continued, “They told us it was a strategic change.
There was new management, and they wanted to save some money.”“It cannot be released in its current state,” El Arbi said underscoring how much of a director’s cut Batgirl, and the unusual maneuver for a studio to kill a film during a director’s rough cut. “There’s no VFX… we still had some scenes to shoot.
So if one day they want us to release the Batgirl movie, they’d have to give us the means to do it. To finish it properly with our vision,” he added.In an Aug.
3 Instagram post after Batgirl was axed, the filmmakers, said, ““We are saddened and shocked by the news. We still can’t believe it.
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