The Canceled Batgirl Movie’s Plot Revealed
The Batgirl movie has been abruptly and shockingly canceled, and now some details about what could have been are emerging.
This article is more than 2 years old
The abrupt cancelation of Batgirl, the HBO Max-produced movie starring Leslie Grace as the titular heroine is undoubtedly one of the biggest stories of the year in the world of entertainment. While Batgirl was by no means the most anticipated of upcoming DCEU releases or the most controversial, it instantly became a much bigger deal when it was announced that Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav had decided to shut it down without any kind of release whatsoever. It seems that audiences may never actually get a chance to see Batgirl, but details of the plot are now starting to emerge.
Interestingly, Belloni also says that there “may or may not” have been a reference to Jason Todd in Batgirl. In the mythos of Batman, Jason Todd was the second character to take on the role of Robin after Dick Grayson aged out and was eventually beaten to death by the Joker (a fate decided by a telephone poll in which fans could vote on him to survive or not). Belloni was clear that Batgirl does not reference Robin, which raises the question of whether Jason Todd might have been referenced by his post-resurrection identity of The Red Hood.
Per MovieWeb, Matthew Belloni revealed on his podcast The Town that the Batgirl movie was apparently not to include overt metahuman elements; most versions of the Barbara Gordon Batgirl portray her as a well-trained human, rather than a superbeing, so that lines up. The central antagonist of the movie, Brendan Fraser’s Firefly, was described as “just a dude in a suit,” rather than a supervillain per se. It seems his character was to have been ambiguously responsible for the death of Batgirl’s mother (by fire, naturally). The actual plot of the movie is described as “very convoluted and involved multiple boyfriends and mob bosses.” That makes a lot of sense, considering the traditional depiction of Gotham City as controlled by various organized crime outfits.
Interestingly, Belloni also says that there “may or may not” have been a reference to Jason Todd in Batgirl. In the mythos of Batman, Jason Todd was the second character to take on the role of Robin after Dick Grayson aged out and was eventually beaten to death by the Joker (a fate decided by a telephone poll in which fans could vote on him to survive or not). Belloni was clear that Batgirl does not reference Robin, which raises the question of whether Jason Todd might have been referenced by his post-resurrection identity of The Red Hood.
Finally, it was revealed that there would have been a look at the Catwoman mask worn by Michelle Pfeiffer in Tim Burton’s Batman Returns. This makes sense, given that Batgirl was supposed to feature Michael Keaton in a return to the role of Batman, so there must have been a connection there. Reportedly, Batgirl would have taken place after the events in The Flash, which also will feature Michael Keaton and still has not been released.
Things are as confusing as ever in the DC Extended Universe and it seems that Batgirl is just one of the casualties of the new Warner Bros Discovery regime. The reasons for Batgirl’s sudden cancelation are somewhat vague, but it seems pretty definitive that the movie will not be released in any form. However, it is always possible that the direction of the DCEU will someday abruptly change (again), and maybe Batgirl will see the light of day. For now, at least we have some better idea of what was intended to happen in the movie and our dreams of what might have been.
