‘Batgirl’ directors express disappointment over their scrapped film after watching ‘The Flash’
With old DCEU coming to a close, directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, who were the creative heads behind the now cancelled ‘Batgirl’ film, have reflected on their scrapped project after watching ‘The Flash’ and expressed great disappointment.
“We watched it and we were sad,” Adil said of ‘The Flash’ in an interview with Insider. “We love director Andy Muschietti and his sister Barbara, who produced the movie. But when we watched it, we felt we could have been part of the whole thing,” Deadline reported.
Adil continued: “We didn’t get the chance to show ‘Batgirl’ to the world and let the audience judge for themselves. Because the audience really is our ultimate boss and should be the deciders of if something is good or bad, or if something should be seen or not.”
He went on to add that the film he was working on: “was very different than ‘The Flash’” in that the movie that starred Ezra Miller “has a big fantasy component” and Batgirl “was more grounded. More like Tim Burton’s Gotham City.”
Before being canceled, the filmmaking duo were told that Batgirl would have likely been scheduled after the release of ‘The Flash’. One thing that they are disappointed by is that they were not able to see Michael Keaton reprise his role of Batman in their version.
“I felt like a kid on set working with Keaton,” Bilall said. “I totally forgot that I was directing.”
Adil added: “It’s the biggest disappointment of our careers. As a fanboy, just to be in the presence of Keaton as Batman, that’s just a privilege and an honour. But it’s a bittersweet feeling.”
‘Batgirl’ was cancelled after total completion, due to the increasingly negative reviews it got during the test screenings, with the producers even calling the cut ‘unwatchable’. The film cost a lot of money, estimated to be somewhere over $100 million, which wasted a lot of WB’s time and money, accelerating the pace of ending the old DCEU.
While ‘Batgirl’ was cancelled for the DCEU (DC Extended Universe), there is no telling what will happen to the scrapped ‘Batgirl’ film in James Gunn’s new DCU (DC Universe).
The director has already assured ‘Suicide Squad’ director David Ayer, that his original version will see the light of day, maybe Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah will also have a chance.