DC promotes Batgirl on Blue Beetle standee

The scrapping of Batgirl from the DC schedule last year was a major blow to comic book movie fans. Despite the studio’s track record, there was plenty of interest around that project: Leslie Grace in the title role, Brendan Fraser as the key villain and Michael Keaton as Batman. Instead, 2022 and 2023 had Black Adam, a Shazam! sequel and The Flash, which at least did give us Keaton. But we all wanted to see how DC would handle Batgirl – and now curiosity has piqued yet again, as the logo remains on a promotional standee for Blue Beetle. OK, now they’re just rubbing it in!

In an image posted to Twitter (uh, we mean X) this week, a user showed off a Blue Beetle standee while also pointing out that “if you enhance on the bottom of the stand there’s this cool little easter egg…” along with a skull emoji. That easter egg is the logo for the discarded Batgirl, featured alongside those for other DC movies like The Batman, Aquaman and more that were or will be released. You can see the logo and standee below:

DC obviously would have approved and created this promotion well in advance – especially noted with the accompanying “Check out all of the DC films coming soon!” claim, which is still odd since they knew Blue Beetle was coming out after the advertised movies – but that Batgirl lingers among those that the studio had actual faith in  is both a bit amusing and infuriating. One can only imagine how Batgirl directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah will feel about this…

Ironically, Blue Beetle is far from generating positive buzz and is currently tracking to have a $17 million opening later this month, meaning it would have the worst opening of a DCEU movie to date. Blue Beetle comes to theaters on August 18th, with the next DCEU entry, Aquman and the Lost Kingdom arriving on December 20th.

Do you think DC really has anything to lose by releasing Batgirl on a streaming service? How do you think Blue Beetle will fare at the box office?