Posted in: CW, DC Universe, HBO, Max, Movies, TV | Tagged: aquaman, batgirl, Batman, Brandon Fraser, cw, HBO, Justin Hartley, Leslie Grace, max, michael keaton, smallville, wonder woman

Batgirl, Wonder Woman, Aquaman: Our "Cancelled DC Elseworlds" Bundle

Imagine a "DC Elseworlds" TV bundle featuring the cancelled Wonder Woman & Aquaman pilots, Batgirl, and more? You know you'd pay for it...

DC movies and TV projects have had a messy path lately. The most recent was the cancellation of the near-completed Batgirl movie that was slated for streaming on HBO MAX. The DC Extended Universe has crashed and burned at the movies, and DC's TV projects have been cancelled or shuffled around where the DC CW shows before were the peak of superhero TV shows, sharing a universe and crossovers of their own. It's oddly parallel to the fortunes of DC Comics in the past, and we started fantasizing: what if Warners released a bundle of recent DC projects, mostly TV, that were cancelled and never released before in physical media and digital? Think of it as a televisual version of Cancelled Comic Cavalcade.

In case you didn't know, Cancelled Comic Cavalcade was an internally published collection of over thirty DC Comics titles that were completed but cancelled in 1978 as a result of the infamous "DC Implosion" due to economic factors where DC had to save money to publish their flagship titles. The collection is now a rare collector's item, often auctioned for thousands of dollars. A bundle of cancelled DC television projects would probably not be that expensive, especially if officially released to fans for an affordable price. Imagine a bundle consisting of the 2006 Aquaman pilot by the showrunners of Smallville and starring Justin Hartley, the 2011 Wonder Woman pilot written by David E. Kelley and starring Adrianne Palicki, and the cancelled Batgirl TV movie starring Leslie Grace, Brendan Fraser, and Michael Keaton as Batman. They could call it "The DC Elseworlds Bundle" and sell it for anywhere from $19.95 to $39.95.

There's usually a reason TV pilots don't get picked up for series – they're often not very good, if not downright terrible, like the Wonder Woman pilot. The Aquaman pilot was not terrible but was rejected for probably not being good enough and other considerations (and was sold digitally on iTunes for a short time). Nobody knows how good or bad the Batgirl TV movie is because it was cancelled as a tax write-off to offset Warner Brothers Discovery's $6 billion debt when Discovery bought the WB from AT&T. The deal made with the IRS is that WBD must not profit from the Batgirl movie as part of that write-off, so it's locked away from the public eye, possibly wiped from the servers. There was a time when failed TV pilots were often shared privately by people in the film and TV industry for the sake of research and reference, but it looks like Batgirl, which cost $90 million, has to be kept from ever being shown to the public.

This has only fueled fan hunger – or morbid curiosity – about just how bad Batgirl could possibly be, especially after discovering what a mess The Flash was, and that was made for over $200 million and bombed at the summer box office. What if WBD had released Batgirl in the theatres instead of The Flash? Batgirl really had a better marketing opportunity: Leslie Grace is an up-and-coming actress of colour who would have been a boon for representation and a female audience, Brandon Fraser won an Oscar this year and would have brought that buzz on top of Michael Keaton's return as Batman, instead of The Flash having a relatively unknown scandal-ridden lead with real-life criminal charges and just Michael Keaton. If it even made over $200 million at the box office, it would be far less of a loss than The Flash has been for the studio. Compared to how dreadful and tiresome The Flash is, could Batgirl, which doesn't have awful Playstation 3-level CGI or confusing and tedious multiverse shenanigans that rendered almost everything in the story meaningless, possibly be that bad?

Anyway, far worse TV shows have been released for sale than Batgirl. How could a "Cancelled DC Elseworlds Bundle" be any worse?

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