‘Batgirl’: Cancelled Film To Get “Funeral Screenings” On Warner Bros. Lot This Week

“Batgirl” has been the talk of Hollywood since news broke on August 2 that new Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav canceled the film and several other DC Films and HBO Max-adjacent projects. And as per usual in Tinsel Town, the reason is money. Zaslav axed the film and other projects to take a tax write-down as he navigates his newly merged company toward a new future.

READ MORE: ‘Batgirl’ Directors Were Blocked From Grabbing Bootleg Footage On Their Phones After Film Was Canceled

But where does that leave the cast and crew of “Batgirl”? After all, the film was deep into post-production before its cancellation. Well, The Hollywood Reporter has the scoop that the film may have secret screenings on the Warner Bros. lot this week for people who worked on the movie. These “funeral screenings,” as one insider phrases it, will be cast, crew, executives, and anyone affiliated with “Batgirl,” before the film’s footage gets locked away forever.  

Is that enough consolation for those connected to the lost project? It may be all anyone involved with the film gets at this point. And despite being in post-production, “Batgirl” is far from a finished product. It had only one test screening for the public before Zaslav killed the picture, and the film still needed various visual effects and a finished score before completion. So, while people involved with the film may love to see what they made before it gets shoved in a vault forever, the “Batgirl” they see is not exactly the final cut directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah envisioned.

Speaking of El Arbi and Fallah, they claim they don’t even have personal access to “Batgirl” footage anymore. While other higher-ups connected to the film may still have footage on personal drives, that more or less spells doom for a future “Batgirl” release. Remember that when Zack Snyder left “Justice League” in early 2017, he left the Warner Bros. lot with a laptop that had a rough four-hour cut of the film. That rough cut became, after a years-long campaign by fans, “Zack Snyder’s Justice League,” which got a release last year.

But remember: “Zack Snyder’s Justice League” is the exception for lost films, not the rule. Right now, if Warner Bros. Discovery releases “Batgirl” in the future, they’d break the rules that allow them to claim a tax write-down on all their recently canceled projects. Given that the write-down grants Zaslav an estimated $3 billion in cost savings as he makes significant adjustments to DC Films and HBO Max, it’s not likely the studio will backtrack on their decision to axe “Batgirl.”  

Of course, a studio also doesn’t receive a full tax write-down up front. Instead, they get a certain percentage of it right away and then the rest sequentially over a predetermined time period, because it’s impossible to foretell how much revenue a project may make or lose over its lifetime. So, it’s also entirely possible, with enough push-back from fans or if Zaslav gets the sense that “Batgirl” is bankable, that the film gets a release down the road and Warner Bros. pays back the government its tax liability.  

Unfortunately, it’s also possible (and more likely) that Zaslav & Warners may destroy all “Batgirl” footage permanently to show the IRS the project will never make money and get their full tax write-down immediately. After all, money is everything in Hollywood, and Zaslav needs to collect as much of it from various scrapped projects as he forges ahead with his new vision of his company’s future.

El Arbi and Fallah hold out hope for a future release of “Batgirl,” though. In a recent Instagram post, they lobby fans to watch their upcoming film “Rebel,” out on September 28, to generate support for “Batgirl” to one day reach an audience. However, considering “Scoob! Holiday Haunt,” a film canceled the same day as “Batgirl,” had its funeral screening on the Warners lot last week, it may be safe to say no amount of lobbying will change this movie’s fate.

Check out the filmmaker’s Instagram message below.