Leslie Grace reacts to the shelving of ‘Batgirl’ movie

Actress Leslie Grace is opening up about when she found out about Warner Bros.’ decision last year to shelve Batgirl, the film that would have had her starring as the titular hero and her alter ego, Barbara Gordon. 

“I found out like the rest of you,” she tells Variety in her first at-length discussion of the situation. “And then my phone just started blowing up,” she adds. 

Previously, her co-star Brendan Fraser, who played the villain Firefly, explained he was similarly shocked. “I thought I was getting punked, but it checked out,” he said, explaining he had to read the news for himself. “Then came hysterical laughter like, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me?’…”

Warner Bros. Discovery said at the time that the film, which was initially bound for HBO Max, would be written off for tax reasons.

“That part really stung,” Fraser expressed. 

Recently, DC Films co-chair Peter Safran — whose tenure with James Gunn hadn’t started when Batgirl was shelved — defended the “bold and courageous” decision. He commented to the trade, “I saw the movie, and there are a lot of incredibly talented people in front of and behind the camera on that film. But that film was not releasable … That film was not releasable.” 

Grace said she took meetings with Warner Bros. execs after the decision, explaining, “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.”

(A previous version of this story erroneously attributed some of Brendan Fraser’s comments to Leslie Grace. The text above has been updated to correct the error.)

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