I agree with Kris: while I don't want wb to keep throwing crap at the wall to see what sticks, I'm also reluctant that innovation might be discarded along with incompetence.
I usually don't agree with you John but you are so spot on with your take on this. Serious quality control needs to be in place in these big studios who keep pumping out subpar theatrical movies.
The executive who replaced Alan Horn, also named Alan, is a business graduate and not an arts graduate. He started working at Disney as a finance officer, going as high as executive VP and CFO of the company. At least Horn oversaw numerous film productions and even founded a bunch of production studios in his early years.
Ive been saying it forever since BvS they need a plan im tired of them putting out shit to put out shit. They literally need to get rid of the garbage and just put out strong movies.
I feel like this is a good step in the right direction but I am concerned at how they apporoach what is a good film and what is not cause it is all subjective and I don't want a film to be released or not released cause their taste is different to mine.
Film is subjective, but if you the person that put money into it and made it, doesn’t like it, how do you expect others to? The problem before is they knew something was garbage and would still put it out to make a buck.
Right. It's too early to tell if this new leadership are actually good curators that will keep morbius level shit away from us or if they're conceited dimwits who can't tell bad from different like the fox execs who prevented a deadpool movie from being made for so long.
It kinda feels weird because Fox and Orion didn't believe in Star Wars and The Terminator until they were huge success, and Marvel believed that Eternals being the best Marvel movie but then it released being considered as the worst reviewed Marvel movie.
@@davidjames579 pretty sure theres some marketing people at WB who thought the same thing. It must mean that the movie was so bad that it actually would've been a huge detriment to brand/reputation
As a huge dc fan it sucks for everyone that worked on the project yes, but sometimes when a company gets bought or merges people lose jobs, departments get condensed. Some of the movies that came out since BVS WB studios have been doing things to make things better for the executives to line their pocket, or for the executives making the director add villains because they want it. Something needed to change and hopefully this helps the quality of the movies going foward
I never believed in Wonder Woman 84 either as soon as I knew what the story seemed to be. So many better Wonder Woman stories to choose from. It is like they did their best to ensure it was disliked. Strange follow up.
Given how all this time everyone has been saying “Who cares about this Batgirl movie?” I don’t think anyone really has any room to complain about this happening
@@majesticpublicenemy3201 Just taking John's word until I can see a movie he's produced. Amy for sure we know throws sandwiches at people and writes racist e-mails about Obama, not my idea of a winner but ymmv.
But how does the higher ups not calling the directors to let them know that their movie has been cancelled leaving them to find out that fact from social media on their wedding day reflect on their leadership strategy????
This, right here, is the thing everyone is saying. The fact that Kevin Feige (Someone from "The competition") congratulated Bilal Fallah on his marriage, while WB cancelled his movie without telling him, just speaks volumes about how business execs really don't care about the creative talent. It's unwise to do that. I'm not going to hold everyone to "Kevin Feige standards", this gentleman is perhaps the greatest procuder of all time tbh (And if he isn't already, I most certainly see that being the case sometime in the future). But, this is not a good way to treat the talent who worked for/with a company. It's not dignifying.
I get point that Kriss is making that it shouldn't be left to suits to decided what we like or dont like, but at the moment we dont know what was wrong with the film
It’s not the fans crying about the cancelation, it’s the social media activists. The fans have been dreading this film for a while. My respect for Zaslav, his ax and his balls is growing with every announcement (only miss for me was cancelling Raised by Wolves, but I get it)
John has strangley always made excuses for everything WB does. He was praising Hamada for years when he was calling shots, and is now praising Zaslav for canning all of Hamada's work.
Oh please. You’re being melodramatic. This wasn’t it for Fraser. He’s having his comeback through The Whale, which will be hitting the Festival circuit soon.
"We're not releasing a movie unless we believe in it." Does that mean that we should expect nothing but masterpieces now? Zaslav's statement will age terribly if they put out something bad soon.
@@b.hemuth7363 A movie doesn’t have to be a gem, but eh there is a problem with Disney Marvel and NOW Warner Bros not thinking animation is cool for the market now. Sony with Spider-Verse is right there and yet NOBODY wants to make a cool looking superhero animated movie for theaters.
1. Test Audiences had the same score as It (2017) and Shazam 2, we know at least It (2017) turned out good (still waiting on Shazam 2, but if it ends up bad then why was ONLY Batgirl canceled then?) 2. A studios thoughts on a project could mean jack shit The first Star Wars movie was hated by 20th Century Fox and they had to bully theaters into showing it. We all know how Star Wars progressed after that. Tons of movies like Back to the Future, ET, Forrest Gump, The Exorcist, Home Alone, The Breakfast Club were all hated by the studios they came from before they were hits
yes but you could say they hate those movies but were still willing to put it out and lose money and prestige, Batgirl on the other hand was straight shelved.
Some of the licensing for dc characters n looney tunes goes to six flags but I feel if wb discovery made a commitment to a theme park they will get it back.
Some of the licensing for dc characters n looney tunes goes to six flags but I feel if wb discovery made a commitment to a theme park they will get it back.
Early screenings of Star Wars were called "a disaster." Toy Story was called a complete mess and almost shut-down by Disney. Leaving quality standards solely up to the executives, who are inherently biased towards safer bets, does not seem like something to celebrate.
Those films changed the game for cinema so they were huge risks. The MCU has been around for 14yrs and comic book films longer. DC doesn’t need to change cinema or take enormous risks to be successful
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles first live action film in the 90's was called garbage by the man in charge "you really screwed that one up" and it's regarded as not just one of the best adaptations of all time, but the best Ninja Turtles film to this day. So. Yeah, I'm not buying their bs "it wasn't good enough" they don't know a thing.
@@dresdenwarlock7978 audiences liked it but critics weren’t fond of that film. That was one person, I doubt it’s just David Z saying it’s not very good, hence why they do test screening
As much as i hate what happened with the wonderful directors involved and the whole crew of Batgirl, David Zaslav is showing some bold and confidence inducing decisions with DC which is unquestionably WB's biggest asset. Just his passion for Superman's future is amazing
The leadership we want is one that's not making sub-par movies, the leadership we DON'T want is to take away a film that's 90% finished. It's unfair to the people that worked on it, and frankly it's unfair to the audience. The train had left the station so let the audience decide if they like it or not, & in the future stop the train before it get's going.
Kind of hard to do that when the previous regime were the ones that greenlit the film and put it into production in the first place. Discovery didn't have the power to stop it before it went into production.
The last iteration of Batgirl was Alicia Silverstone and that wasn't received properly...so if this was on the same pace I'm sure they dont want the same feedback.
John's attitude that every movie is subjective disappeared pretty quickly. He also ignores THR's report that Batgirl's rating from the test screening was on the same level as "It" and "Shazam 2." So the film wasn't canceled (solely) because of that.
I think the biggest comment from fans is "Why don't you make good movies?" DC and Marvel movies should be pretty easy to make. You already have decades of historical data on what characters are popular and why. Spending hundreds of millions of dollars to make movies of secondary and tertiary characters is asking for trouble. If Batgirl and Morbius were great characters then they would have had comics with hundreds of issues. For these characters don't make a movie but spend $20-50 million and make a mini-series to introduce them and see how the audiences react. Then if you have them in a movie as a second or tertiary character the audience will be more inclined to spend money to watch the movie.
@@alexjones50 Making a passable film I think is very manageable as long as the writing is good. Most movie audiences when you have a good story are willing to accept mediocre acting, wonky CGI or poor editing. Honestly most of the bad films couldn't be saved be saved because the writing was crap from the start.
I kinda agree with the reel rejects take on this. I’ll believe this “10 year plan” when we see it, old dc said the same thing years ago and it went to shit
As a chef I have to say I completely agree with the ribeye comment. We work for the customers and can't deliver a bad product. Everyone in the kitchen knows and understand this, so I think Zaslav is doing the right thing here. I also don't understand everyone feeling bad for the people who's worked on this film. I understand that it sucks to not get their movie released, but they have gotten paid for their work and if the product really is as bad as it seems, it's WB's responsability to hold it back and make sure the customers get a good experience, even if that means hurting some of their employees feelings.
I wouldn't mind them cutting this down into a 15-20 minute short film like fans put out on RU-vid, so that we sort of get a glimpse of what could've happened and that they don't waste the best scenes. 🙂
Am I tripping because I could've sworn that Batgirl got changed to a theatrical release 🤔?? Like all the uproar and the cost of the movie made them change their minds about releasing it on streaming. I know it doesn't matter now but with them continuing to say straight to streaming throws me off a bit
@@TommFoolery yeah I understood the new management coming in and dropping the film. It's just the fact that John keeps reiterating that it was going straight to streaming and not going to live up to the 70-90 million dollar budget that has me looking confused. Cuz if it had a theater release then the film possibly could've made a profit. Again I know it doesn't matter now. Just don't like the way he's phrasing it
All these normies crying over batgirl being canceled now knows how snyder fans feel. Ben Affleck had a plan to introduce batgirl in his fight against deathstroke and wb interfered. Nobody wants super girl and bat girl replacing superman and batman. Hell they even tried to replace Ben Affleck with Michael Keaton Batman for the future of the dceu. JK Simmons Jim gordon does not make sense with Michael Keaton Batman. The batgirl test screening did poorly and the cgi and vfx will make it cost more with additions to reshoots. Imagine replacing Ironman and Captain America with Iron Heart and Captain Peggy Carter after avengers 2012. We haven't even see a live action superman, batman vs darkseid yet or legion of doom. NOBODY ASKED FOR BATGIRL when there is not solo batman film in the dceu!
Yet they believe in the flash? It must nothing sort of a masterpiece. Like it must really believe it’s that good if their putting up with Ezra Miller’s actions.
It’s definitely more expensive, and there’s probably contractual issues since it’s been in development for so long. Who knows though, Batgirl was supposed to be released this year, Flash is next year, they have some time to do the same there. My biggest curiosity is how they plan to market a film without the main lead.
The problem I have is that Zaslav looked at Batgirl and decided not to spend the money or get the talent to fix it, implying he believes Batgirl the character is not worth a movie. That's what's insulting to us Batgirl fans.
I dont give a damn who David Zazlav is I heard they didn't inform the actors the movie was canned. That's just rude if that's true and disrespectful. I mean look at Battlefield Earth some idiot decided to release that peice of shit and the chances of Batgirl being worse than Battlefield Earth is pretty remote.
@@jyotirmaydash6020 My thinking is that Feige has stretched himself way too thin. He’s brilliant, highly competent, but he’s just one man at the end of the day. He has 24 hours like the rest of us, and needs to sleep, like the rest of us. He’s got all these movies and shows to keep an eye on and I think it’s part of the reason the quality has been diluted. He had his hands and eyes on everything before, now he possibly just doesn’t have the time to maintain the appropriate quality control on everything.
My worry with this statement is that there won't be any risks taken with certain DC characters. Like I don't think this mindset on the marvel side would've green lit movies like GotG, Thor ragnorock, or ant-man. BUT it could also lead to excellent films with directors & writers reeally having perform at the top of their game. Regardless looking forward to justice league in 2073
I say, yea don’t put that shit in the theaters. Your just ripping people off. But, putting a movie on hbo max is slightly different. If I’m bored and don’t have nothing better to do. I won’t mind as much watching something like a morbius. I dont have to pay extra movie. So I won’t mind watching something not to great. I can find enjoyment in certain things
Look at her costume. she looks ridiculous! she's dressed for a party. she's going to comic con. doc martens and a bubble jacket with a backwards hat with holes for her eyes to see. i'm sorry but her nose just doesn't look appealing and even worse in the mask. i don't mean to be mean but she looks awful in that suit. the suit also i trash. it doesn't look anything on marvel level. although shazaam is an ugly cheap suit too which is now telling me they can't find someone who knows how to make costumes. maybe hire the marvel people or hire the costume designer who made the superman movies costumes. i bet they hired the designer on craigs list.
The suit is based on the 2014 Batgirl of Burnside suit and is almost spot on accurate. It's not the best but it is pretty accurate to the comics. You toxic fans are killers or your own damn movies.
All of the test screenings were pointing to Batgirl being an absolute disaster. I see a lot of people saying the movie was finished, but no… it wasn’t. The director himself used the term “far from complete” on an Instagram post. This movie had $90 million spent on it, was probably going to have another $90 mill spent on it in post and reshoots, and another 50-100 million spent on it in advertising only for it to be a critical and commercial failure. Zaslav undoubtedly did the right thing by axing the project. This dude’s said several times that the old WB mistreated the DC brand and it deserves more respect than what old management use to give it, and for that sentiment alone I already have more faith in this guy than anyone that’s been in charge of WB for the past 10 years.
Can we get a Cyborg movie and a Green Latern reboot first??? Those are guaranteed Billion franchises.... Marvel is already making a Kamala Khan and Moon Knight
I hope they talked about this decision with the cast and crew before announcing it publicly. If it's true that the directors found out during one of their weddings and had no heads up, then i don't think that's good leadership.
Maybe, but then again, WB one day also announced the brilliant decision that they’d be putting all their 2021 films on HBO Max upon release, without telling anyone involved with those films. Different people now, but it’s not like the people working there wouldn’t have experience with something like that.
@@alexman378 see when that happened we called it bad leadership. But here, even if batgirl is really bad and they made the right decision, not talking to the cast and crew beforehand is still bad leadership and should be identified as such
@@shahzaibchughtai8232 That wasn’t just bad leadership, that’s the stuff that will get you a failing grade in a Business 101 course. I still struggle to understand where they got the sense that this was a good idea. Doubtful that the people making this had no clue of what the execs thought. There wasn’t a single positive thing to come out of the screenings, they probably knew it wasn’t going well at least.
that is not a Batsuit, looks more like biker leathers with a cape and cowl and that sure as hell doesnt look like Barbera Gordon. DC Should really draw from how ROCKSTEADY Designed batgirl from Arkham Knight or maybe call back to Yvonne Craig from the 66-67 Series . if a picture is worth 1000 words that picture of Batgirl from the now cancelled movie says everything about why it was cancelled
The suit is based on the Batgirl of Burnside suit and pretty accurate. Agree not the best suit but it is an actual comic accurate suit. I wish people would stop criticizing and hating on these things without actually seeing the movie just because of bias. Just watch the movies. The creative departments know what they are doing and going for.
Just give us our main hero's. Once you hit your 22nd movie then we can start doing legacy characters. Im sick of DC skipping great stories and adventures to catch up to marvel
What if they just didn't want to spend money on marketing and advertising? What if this is a marketing ploy to get people upset that the movie is being canned? I haven't heard as much about a movie in recent years as this one. So, I guess I'm saying that I believe it could still be released, due to popular demand. Will be interesting to see how this unfolds! :)
DC was rejuvinated with The Jocker, SS2 though a box office failure was good, Peacemaker and The Batman. Those movies only resucitated DC. Having a terrible Morbious level movie would sink them again. Batgirl looked like a CW show to me. Solo movies like Cyborg, Green Latern, Superman 2 havent been made yet.... but DC thinks Batgirl is viable????
Whoever still thinks tht batgirl wth tht halloween costume would have worked needs to go to check up wth a psychiatrist. DC fans deserves better n previous regime's woke politics has destroyed DC totally. Dunno if zaslav will be able to redeem it but hope for the best.
The suit is ripped straight from the comics and in their defense is pretty accurate. Batgirl of Burnside. You all can never be pleased and the main reason DC movies fail. You all are your own worst enemies.
Honestly that's what has got me scratching my head. Let the movie be a turd. Release it anyway. You can make 10 dollars when you currently have 0. It honestly cannot be worse than some of the other early DCEU turd whoppers they've put out.
@@CoRektOh My thought too. Later on it came out that the test screening wasn't even that bad which makes me scratch my head even more lol. Hell you'd probably make that 100 million releasing it in theaters too. Just do a minimum marketing plan like The Last Duel last year getting jack shit for promotion (which sucked because it was a damn good movie). Even shitty movies with some kind of name behind it don't struggle to at least get 100 million.
@@brycebirkinbine4119 Or just quietly dump it in HBO Max. Make up some BS reason and be done with it. Making the movie, spending 90 million dollars in it, axe-ing it suddenly without even telling the director (poor bastard learned about his movie getting cancelled the day of his wedding, through social media) or the principle cast; that's just not smart. In fact, a whole lot of people would not work with DC anymore if this is the way they treat the people that work for them.
@@CoRektOh I mean I agree with the HBO Max thing too. My whole point was you could just release it to theaters if they just didn't want it on HBO Max. It wasn't a super expensive movie to make.
Glad to see WB making a change, too bad Disney won't move on from Kathleen Kennedy who can't keep directors to save her life to run her films. The list of directors leaving is long and endless.
My friend saw a screening and what he told me the film wasn't good. From what he could say it was dialogue, origin was really dumb and raised a few plotholes, bad editing (given it was a test screening so that's subject to change), said the sets/costumes looked cheap with horrid lighting (like noticeably bad) saying it felt like a bad superhero movie of the 2000's. He ranked it between Catwoman and Morbius it terms of quality. Once he heard they canceled it he quote said, "WB dodged a bullet."
I just wish they stop fucking around like c'mon I need a Batgirl, Nightwing, Red Hood, Deathstroke, and Batman Beyond film. These characters have been around for years and still don't have a live action film.
