It’s been a little over a month since Warner Bros. Discovery shelved the Batgirl movie. The move has prompted a lot of blowback toward the studio, especially as it was all so they could take advantage of a tax write-down, but Warner Bros. Discovery CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels said that the reaction was “blown out of proportion.“
Gunnar Wiedenfels spoke at the Bank of America Securities Media, Communications & Entertainment Conference earlier today. “To me, you know, it’s blown out of proportion a little bit, in terms of the attention externally,” said Wiedenfels said. “The focus is, on a go-forward basis here, we’re spending more than ever in the history of the two legacy companies on content. We’re continuing to make significant investments — [but] we’ll make them differently.” Wiedenfels added, “Media likes to talk about media, I guess.” He also doesn’t think that the cancellation of Batgirl was all that unusual. “I don’t think it is unusual,” Wiedenfels said. “We are a creative industry and one of the elements of creativity is that there is judgment and views on what the potential of what a certain piece of [intellectual property] might be.“
From a creative standpoint, it’s somewhat concerning that something you’ve worked so hard on will never see the light of day just so a corporation can save a few bucks. However, Gunnar Wiedenfels claimed that Warner Bros. Discovery has “healthy relationships” with creative talent. “We are offering one of the best platforms for anyone in the creative space,” he said.
Batgirl directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah weren’t even able to keep any of the footage for themselves. The pair said that they tried to save some footage when they learned of the movie’s fate, but the studio had already blocked it from their server. “Adil called and told me, ‘Go ahead! Shoot everything on your phone!’” Fallah explained. “I went on the server… Everything was gone. We were [like]… ‘F**ing shit!’… We did not [even] keep [the scenes] with Batman in it.” Do you think the reaction to the cancellation of the Batgirl movie was blown out of proportion?