{"id":301417,"date":"2025-11-23T09:26:04","date_gmt":"2025-11-23T09:26:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/301417\/"},"modified":"2025-11-23T09:26:04","modified_gmt":"2025-11-23T09:26:04","slug":"brendan-fraser-says-batgirl-cancellation-shows-movies-are-commodified","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/301417\/","title":{"rendered":"Brendan Fraser Says ‘Batgirl’ Cancellation Shows Movies Are Commodified"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tBrendan Fraser<\/a> has always been transparent about his disappointment in Warner Bros.\u2019s decision to shelve \u201cBatgirl<\/a>\u201c: the completed, but unreleased DC superhero movie that would have seen the Academy Award-winning actor play the villainous Firefly opposite Leslie Grace as the titular heroine. In an interview with the Associated Press <\/a>on Nov. 19, Fraser opened up about what was lost for creatives and audiences when the film was blocked from release and what its cancellation communicates about the current state of Hollywood.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe product\u2014 I\u2019m sorry \u2018content\u2019\u2014is being commodified to the extent that it\u2019s more valuable to burn it down and get the insurance on it than to give it a shot in the marketplace,\u201d Fraser said. \u201cI mean, with respect, we could blight itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDirected by Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, \u201cBatgirl\u201d was meant to be the next installment in the DC Extended Universe<\/a>. Alongside Grace and Fraser, the movie was also supposed to introduce Jacob Scipio as Anthony Bressi and Ivory Aquino as Alysia Yeoh in the franchise and reprise J.K. Simmons as Jim Gordon and Michael Keaton as Batman.<\/p>\n

\n\tProduction took place in Scotland between November 2021 and March 2022, but while in post-production, Warner Bros. announced that it would not release the film<\/a> as scheduled, opting to shelve it as a cost-cutting measure in Aug. 2022. Not a frame of footage has ever been screened publicly.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cA whole movie,\u201d Fraser remarked. \u201cI mean, there were four floors of production in Glasgow. I was sneaking into the art department just to geek out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe actor continued to talk about the cultural impact that the film could have made. \u201cThe tragedy of that is that there\u2019s a generation of little girls who don\u2019t have a heroine to look up to and go, \u2018She looks like me.’\u201d Grace would have been the first Batgirl to headline her own film and one of just a handful of women to get a standalone superhero movie in the male-dominated genre.<\/p>\n

\n\tAt the same time, Fraser also acknowledged that older fans would delight in seeing Keaton return as the Caped Crusader. \u201cI mean, Michael Keaton came back as Batman. The Batman!\u201d he said. Keaton made his debut as Batman in Tim Burton\u2019s 1989 film, \u201cBatman,\u201d and reprised the role in its 1992 sequel, \u201cBatman Returns.\u201d He eventually donned the cape and cowl in the DCEU for the first time in 2023\u2019s \u201cThe Flash.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWith Warner Bros now for sale and the DC intellectual property revamped as DC Studios under James Gunn and Peter Safran\u2019s leadership, the odds of \u201cBatgirl\u201d ever releasing seem even more dubious than they did two years ago. <\/p>\n

\n\tFraser won the Academy Award for his performance in 2022\u2019s \u201cThe Whale.\u201d He currently stars in \u201cRental Family\u201d and is confirmed to reprise his role as Rick O\u2019Connell from \u201cThe Mummy\u201d<\/a> in the series\u2019 upcoming fourth installment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brendan Fraser has always been transparent about his disappointment in Warner Bros.\u2019s decision to shelve \u201cBatgirl\u201c: the completed,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":301418,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[105238,42413,49,48,35380,135368,75],"class_list":{"0":"post-301417","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-batgirl","9":"tag-brendan-fraser","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-canada","12":"tag-david-zaslav","13":"tag-dc-extended-universe","14":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=301417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301417\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/301418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}