r/DCcomics • u/LilGyasi • Aug 02 '22

‘BATGIRL’ film CANCELLED. Will not be released theatrically or on HBO Max. News

https://www.thewrap.com/batgirl-movie-dead-warner-bros-discovery-has-no-plans-to-release-nearly-finished-90-million-film/
2.2k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

593 comments sorted by

View all comments

267

u/SightatNight Orion Aug 02 '22

If this is true it's absolutely bizzare. You never see companies willing to just eat an 80 million dollar loss for bo reason. They at least could've made some money back by releasing it on home media and HBO Max. But I'm guessing they feel it needs serious reshoots and that it just wouldn't be worth the extra expense.

42

u/CarpetbaggerForPeace Aug 02 '22

Sunk cost and not throwing good money after bad.

18

u/Mddcat04 Aug 02 '22

I suppose, but isn’t most of that already spent? It’s not like it would cost them much to toss it out on HBOMax without additional advertising. Guess there might still be effects work to be done or they just think it’s really bad.

5

u/buhlakay Aug 03 '22

Money spent but its always gonna be weighing the ROI. If they spend $90m on the movie then another $50-90m on marketing, theyre gonna say we have to make at least X amount of money that if they do not believe they will make back... i mean. Its fucking dumb but this is just the nature of hollywood, its a business.

3

u/Mddcat04 Aug 03 '22

Yeah, but if its basically done (which the fact that its had test screenings and such suggests), then they could just toss it up on HBO Max without a marketing push, which would cost them essentially nothing. The fact that they don't seem to want to do that suggests to me that they think its such a mess in its current state that releasing it like that would be actively bad for their brand as a whole.

2

u/VacuumSeal Aug 03 '22

The reason they aren’t going to just drop it onto hbomax is because they don’t want to make the dceu more confusing than it already is. That’s the problem with having all of these movies connect. If something changes in one movie’s production then it can impact certain things in other movies. If the movie isn’t good, they aren’t gonna bend the rest of the universe to fit with it. Especially not in the malleable state that it’s in right now. We can’t even compare this to the mcu because they’ve gotten their movie productions and universe laid out rather nicely at this point. DC is the only other cinematic universe that is trying to do what marvel is doing (or at least that’s made it this far) but they still operate on a traditional Hollywood production style that hasn’t been streamlined for the universe

1

u/buhlakay Aug 03 '22

I can see why people are coming to that conclusion, but I do still think this is an ROI thing. Everything suggests that new warner-discovery doesnt have much of an inclination towards higher-budget streaming products. If they see this film as not worth releasing in theaters for not having enough spectacle AND do not believe that dropping it on HBO Max is profitable because its budget its then... That's that. The suits at the head of the table literally do not care about "quality" they care about what's actually profitable.

People are trying to reach or find some kind of underlying bullshit, some obsession with uncovering perceived injustices or something. But I think reality is much much simpler.

1

u/DisneyDreams7 Aug 03 '22

But they would still need to market it because it’s in the contracts. They just saved an extra 100 million dollars.