Batgirl Star Leslie Grace Pushes Back On DC Head Peter Safran's 'Unreleasable' Remark
The cancellation of the "Batgirl" movie was a serious blow to fans of the character around the world, especially because the movie was reportedly close to done and almost ready to release but was shelved anyway. In an interview with Variety, the film's star, Leslie Grace, pushed back against new DC Studios head Peter Safran, who had said the movie was "not releasable." That's a pretty harsh statement.
Grace was candid about the hurt she and the rest of the cast and crew felt with regard to the flippant comments made by various executives about the film, but she also understood that there were many factors involved in why the film wasn't deemed releasable. It's a complicated situation, but her nuanced comments remind us all that even though the people who make movies are lucky to have one of the coolest jobs in the world, it is still work, and having the outcome of that hard work disappear can be pretty disheartening.
What makes a film unreleasable?
According to Safran, "Batgirl" was "unreleasable" and could "hurt DC creatively," but no one from DC has clarified exactly what was wrong with the movie to make it impossible to release. Grace explained that she had her own meetings with Warner Bros. Film Group CEOs Pam Abdy and Mike De Luca, and they explained how the plans and budgets worked, which enlightened her on some of the aspects of moviemaking that she hadn't considered before, but it still didn't explain Safran's comments. As Grace told Variety:
"They weren't really specific on anything creative in terms of what they felt about the film and how it would've hurt DC creatively. But I'm a human being, and people have perceptions and people read things. 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. [...] In every film, there are obstacles, and our film was nothing short of that. Half of the shoot was night shoots in Scotland, where it never stops raining. So there were obstacles, but at the end of the day, because of the incredible crew, nothing that ever got in the way of us delivering what we knew we wanted to deliver for this film."
She revealed that she did at least get to see a version of the film that was as close to finishing as it got before the studio shakeup, but that there was nothing there worth shelving. In fact, she called them "incredible," and saw the "potential for a good film." Maybe one day DC will release the movie and we can all see what the heck the executives were talking about.