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Batgirl: Brendan Fraser On The Commodification Of Content

Rental Family star Brendan Fraser has some thoughts on the canceled Batgirl film and how it is a sign of content being commodified.

With yet another Warner Bros. sale lurking on the horizon and the release date for Coyote vs. Acme creeping ever closer, it might be a good time to look back at some of the baffling decisions the current leadership at Warner Bros. has made in the short time they have had power. One of those baffling decisions was shelving several near-completed or completed films for tax purposes. Coyote vs. Acme was pulled back from the void, but Scoob! Holiday Haunt and Batgirl remain lost and will likely stay there. If there was one of those two that could be saved, it would be Scoob! which was either complete or very close to being complete, unlike Batgirl, which still had significant post-production work that needed to be done. Brendan Fraser was set to join the DC Universe in another role as Firefly. During an interview with the AP about his new film, Rental Family, Fraser shared his thoughts on the film and how it reflects real issues within the industry.

"A whole movie. I mean, there were four floors of production in Glasgow," Fraser said. "I was sneaking into the art department just to geek out. The tragedy of that is that there's a generation of little girls who don't have a heroine to look up to and go, "She looks like me." I mean, Michael Keaton came back as Batman. The Batman! The product — I'm sorry, "content" — is being commodified to the extent that it's more valuable to burn it down and get the insurance on it than to give it a shot in the marketplace. I mean, with respect, we could blight itself."

The way Fraser shifted from "product" to "content" very deliberately means there are people working in Hollywood who don't have their head buried in the sand when it comes to the overall health and viability of the industry in a post-pandemic world.

The Long Dead End Road To Making a Batgirl Film

The Batgirl movie had a hard time getting to the big screen, which is saying something considering some of the DC projects that have struggled over the years. It was going to be brought to the big screen by Joss Whedon before it was widely reported that he was a terrible person and promptly left the project. The movie picked up some new directors in 2021 in the form of Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, and it was supposed to be the first DC project to make its debut on HBO Max.

Back in July 2021, it was announced that Leslie Grace of In The Heights fame had snagged the coveted role of Barbara Gordon, aka Batgirl. We got some minor plot details for Batgirl during DC FanDome and a piece of concept art. Jacob Scipio, who was one of the stars of the much better than it had any right to be Bad Boys For Life, joined the cast in an unknown role. J.K. Simmons is also set to return as Commissioner Gordon. We learned that Brandon Fraser would play the villain at the end of October 2021. Though we don't know the exact villain, the rumors said it might be Firefly. Production on the movie started at the end of  2021, and Batgirl was supposed to release at some point in 2022.

In August 2022, Warner Bros. Discovery canceled several big projects for tax purposes, and Batgirl was one of them. Many cast members tried to save the film and see if there was some way to prevent it from being thrown in the vault, never to be seen again, but it wasn't meant to be. There were "funeral screenings," and now the film is locked away, never to be seen again. Batgirl is not a SnyderCut situation because of the tax write-off. Warner Bros. Discovery cannot make any money on this or any of the projects used in the write-off, or they would have to pay back that money. So Batgirl appears to be well and truly locked away, never to be seen again.

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