{"id":534288,"date":"2026-07-10T06:46:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T06:46:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/534288\/"},"modified":"2026-07-10T06:46:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T06:46:14","slug":"j-k-simmons-briefly-addresses-the-whole-batgirl-debacle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/534288\/","title":{"rendered":"J.K. Simmons briefly addresses the whole Batgirl debacle"},"content":{"rendered":"

Even though it\u2019s a few years in the rearview at this point, Warner Bros.\u2019 decision to kill a fully completed\u00a0Batgirl\u00a0movie<\/a> back in 2022 remains a frankly bizarre move from a major studio, one that CEO David Zaslav has never really lived down. And that\u2019s not just us saying it: J.K. Simmons, who c0-starred in the film as part of his short tenure as that version of the DC comic book movie universe\u2019s Commissioner Jim Gordon, briefly addressed its cancellation in an interview with Josh Horowitz\u2019s Happy Sad Confused\u00a0podcast this week<\/a>. And while Simmons is more or less of the epitome of a professional diplomat when it comes to this kind of thing, even he had to refer to the whole situation as \u201cbizarre,\u201d giving a rueful laugh about \u201cthat big hit,\u00a0Batgirl.\u201d<\/p>\n

Simmons notes that he\u2019s never seen the movie, which he reportedly had a decent-sized role in, given that he was playing the father of the title character. (Played by Leslie Grace, who\u2019s expressed her own unhappiness about the movie being trapped in tax write-off hell<\/a>.) \u201cNo!\u201d he responds when Horowitz asks him about it. \u201cApparently one test audience saw it, and it\u2019s not like it was a bad score from the test audience,\u201d Simmons remarked. Speaking warmly of directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, the actor noted that it was \u201can exciting prospect\u201d to be part of the character\u2019s origin. \u201cWe really had a good time making it, thought it was going to be a fun superhero movie.\u201d Of course, being J.K. Simmons, he also doesn\u2019t seem too broken up about the movie being locked, apparently in perpetuity, in \u201ca vacuum,\u201d ending with a shrug and an \u201cOh well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elsewhere in the interview, Simmons talks about his other superhero duties over the years, including his happy surprise that\u00a0Invincible\u00a0has been a hit, and the fact that his addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe was about as last-minute and slapdash as you can get. Speaking of his brief cameo reprising the role of J. Jonah Jameson in 2019\u2019s\u00a0Spider-Man: Far From Home<\/a>, Simmons notes that the scene was added to the movie deep in its post-production process, with the time between his agent getting a call, and him filming the scene in some executive\u2019s office in Los Angeles, being just a couple of days. He also remarked that he still\u00a0hasn\u2019t met series star Tom Holland: \u201cDelightful guy, I\u2019m told!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Even though it\u2019s a few years in the rearview at this point, Warner Bros.\u2019 decision to kill a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":534289,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[146,85,46,397],"class_list":["post-534288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=534288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534288\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/534289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=534288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=534288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=534288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}