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We learned last summer that the Batgirl movie was completely scrapped by Warner Brothers Discovery. The studio said that screenings went terribly and that finishing the editing and releasing the movie would cause them to lose even more money than shelving it would. Apparently, the stars of the movie didn’t even find out that the movie was shelved from the studio. Actress Leslie Grace said she found out from the New York Post article. Leslie spoke to Variety about her thoughts on the film and its shelving for the first time since the news was announced.

When “Batgirl” completed its seven-month production in Scotland, star Leslie Grace received a wrap gift from Brendan Fraser, who played her nemesis, Firefly, in the DC movie — a gold necklace that included two charms, a little bell and a pair of dice.

“The card said a lot of really sweet things, but he basically said, ‘I give you this necklace because in this business you gotta have a little luck. So ring your bell and never stop,’” Grace says. “It was just like, Whoa. And after all this, it’s had so much meaning.”

“All this” is the August bombshell that Warner Bros. Discovery had decided to kill the film, co-directed by Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah. After the first disappointing test screenings, WBD executives chose to take a tax write-off instead of trying to complete work on the film, which had cost the debt-ridden studio $90 million, and would have cost many more millions to finish.

Grace says she had no idea the movie, originally set to stream on HBO Max, was shelved, until it was first reported by the New York Post.

“I found out like the rest of you,” she says. “And then my phone just started blowing up.”

Variety talked at length with the 28-year-old Grace. It’s the first time she’s opened up in such depth since learning of Batgirl’s fate.

On the DC studio head saying releasing the movie could have hurt the studio: 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.

On whether she thought the movie would work: I’m not going to lie to you. 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. At least from what I was able to see.

On seeing a final cut of the film: That’s the one thing I asked for. I got to see the film as far as it got to; the film wasn’t complete by the time that it was tested. There were a bunch of scenes that weren’t even in there. They were at the beginning of the editing process, and they were cut off because of everything going on at the company. But the film that I got to see — the scenes that were there — was incredible. There was definitely potential for a good film, in my opinion. Maybe we’ll get to see clips of it later on.

[From Variety]

My first thought reading this was that Leslie is incredibly gracious — particularly when she’s like “I understand how it could be frustrating [that they said the movie would hurt DC creatively].” She obviously has to take the high road to protect her career, but what happened to her sucks and the way she found out sucks. By her account, she made a movie she felt good about and proud of, even seeing the filmed scenes that the studio deemed bad, so it sucks that it likely won’t see the light of day. It sounds like it was a tough shoot at times, so it begs the question, why didn’t the studio step in and make their changes sooner, when filming was still going on and it would have been likely easier to implement? Was this really just a casualty of the merger? This was incredibly poorly handled. I don’t know much about Leslie, but I hope her career doesn’t suffer from this. Unfortunately, it seems like it already has, with her new project cited in the Variety article being a podcast series.

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