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Batgirl's Leslie Grace Pushes Back At Claims The Film Was Unreleasable
She joins Brendan Fraser in publicly rejecting DC's Peter Safran's recent remarks.
Leslie Grace — Batgirl herself — has finally weighed in on the claims that the shelved DC film was unreleasable.
Batgirl was unceremoniously tossed out by Warner Bros. Discovery last year after the merger between the two companies, despite the film almost being complete.
More recently, new DC Studios co-head Peter Safran, who was not at the company when the decision was made, ruffled feathers by making the baffling decision to slam the film as “not releasable,” and referring to the choice to punt it as “courageous” because “it would have hurt DC” and the creative team behind it.
Blasting the hardworking creative team behind a movie the public will never get to see and judge for themselves for no good reason is a bold move — and not one that sat well with Batgirl’s cast.
“I got to see the film as far as it got to,” Grace recently told Variety, referencing the fact that the film was unfinished to the point of missing full scenes when it had its test screening. “But the film that I got to see — the scenes that were there — was incredible.”
She isn’t the only cast member who has spoken out in defense of the film. Brendan Fraser has repeatedly expressed his disappointment with WBD’s decision in interviews, and recently said that lots of people he knows who saw the last cut of the movie absolutely loved it.
Whether the movie in its current state was great or not, or whether it could have been spruced up with reshoots as is common among big budget films, we may never know. But Grace stressed that, during production, “nothing ever got in the way of us delivering what we knew we wanted to deliver for this film,” and said the discussions she had with Warner Bros. didn’t dive into this claim that Batgirl would have “hurt DC creatively.” She also says she has not heard from Safran or co-head James Gunn at all.
“And when words are expressed very lightly about work that people really dedicated a lot of time to — not just myself but the whole crew — I can understand how it could be frustrating,” she added.
After Warner Bros. was bought by Discovery, the company reportedly started writing off projects for tax breaks rather than release them commercially.
Brendan Fraser played the villain Firely in the unreleased film.
Grace played the Barbara Gordon iteration of Batgirl.
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Rachel Kiley is presumably a writer and definitely not a terminator. She can usually be found crying over queerbaiting in the Pitch Perfect franchise or on Twitter, if not both.
Rachel Kiley is presumably a writer and definitely not a terminator. She can usually be found crying over queerbaiting in the Pitch Perfect franchise or on Twitter, if not both.
