Batgirl co-director Adil El Arbi confirmed that the canceled DC movie was inspired by two acclaimed filmmakers in the form of Christopher Nolan and Tim Burton, who directed each of their own Batman film series. El Arbi revealed that he and co-director Bilall Fallah channeled Nolan when they were creating their vision for Gotham City while also applying Burton’s filmmaking techniques to minimize the use of CGI for the film.
“It was really a blend between Nolan and Burton,” El Arbi told Yahoo Entertainment. “Gotham City was a more realistic world, and the story was very straightforward and emotional. It was more of an actor’s movie without a lot of visual effects. We don’t really like CGI, so we used a lot of miniatures. There was this one great action sequence where a truck crashed into a tunnel, and we did it with miniatures like Burton did in Batman. It remains the coolest thing we’ve ever done in movies — it was old-school filmmaking, and we’ll do it again!”
Despite the sudden cancellation, the filmmaking duo still expressed to work with DC Studios again one day.
“I think about Batgirl every day,” he continued. “I replay the making of the movie in my head, thinking, ‘What should we have done differently?’ But as we say, that was God’s plan. We can only hope to come back to DC one day.”
Leslie Grace Was Proud of the Batgirl Movie
The Batgirl film was originally scheduled to debut on Max. However, despite completing its production, Warner Bros. decided to cancel its release as part of the cost-cutting measures they’ve implemented following the official merger of WarnerMedia and Discovery. After DC Studios co-CEO Peter Safran praised Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav’s decision to scrap the Batgirl film, lead star Leslie Grace immediately defended the movie they’ve filmed.
“That’s the one thing I asked for,” Grace said. “I got to see the film as far as it got to; the film wasn’t complete by the time that it was tested. There were a bunch of scenes that weren’t even in there. They were at the beginning of the editing process, and they were cut off because of everything going on at the company. But the film that I got to see — the scenes that were there — was incredible. There was definitely potential for a good film, in my opinion. Maybe we’ll get to see clips of it later on.”
Besides Grace, the unreleased movie also starred Oscar winner J.K. Simmons (Zack Snyder’s Justice League) and Michael Keaton (The Flash), who reprised their respective roles of Commissioner Gordon and Bruce Wayne/ Batman. Additional cast included Jacob Scipio, Ethan Kai, Corey Johnson, Rebecca Front, and Brendan Fraser.
