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Birds of Prey‘s bat-swinging girl is still planning to step up to the plate for HBO Max.
In the wake of Warner Bros. Discovery abruptly pulling the plug on the nearly complete, Leslie Grace-starring Batgirl movie, a spokesperson for Warner Bros. Pictures confirms for TVLine that the Black Canary standalone movie that was first announced a year ago remains in development at the streamer.
Spinning off Jurnee Smollett‘s Dinah Lance character from the 2019 feature Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey (fka Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn), news of the project leaked late last August and was promptly confirmed by both Smollett and frequent collaborator Misha Green, who is penning the script.
“Guess the Canary is out of the cage! 🤪” tweeted Smollett at the time. “So excited to finally embark on this adventure with my creative soul sis
@MishaGreen.”
Green likewise tweeted, “We’re just at the very beginning of a loooong journey to the screen, but obvs I couldn’t turn down the chance to put the DAMN in The Black Damn Canary with @jurneesmollett!”
Green and Smollett first collaborated on the 2016 historical drama series Underground (for WGN America), followed by HBO’s undeservedly one-and-done supernatural thriller Lovecraft Country, which was developed for TV by Green and co-starred Smollett as Letitia “Leti” Lewis — who, like Dinah/Black Canary, also proved handy with a baseball bat.
Batgirl was unexpectedly and completely shelved earlier this month, with WarnerBros. Discovery electing to take a tax write-off on the $70-$90 million movie versus pursue a theatrical or streaming release. “We’re not going to launch your movie until it’s ready,” Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav explained following an Aug. 4 earnings call. “We’re not going to launch a movie to make a quota. And we’re not going to put a movie out unless we believe in it. Particularly with DC, where we think we want to pivot and we want to elevate and we want to focus.”
“The objective is to grow the DC brand, to grow the DC characters,” Zaslav continued. “But also, our job is to protect the DC brand, and that’s what we’re going to do.”
No further details on Black Canary, including its current timetable, are available at this time.
Good!
How can this possibly make sense, given Batgirl’s cancelation? It’s still targeted to HBO Max and all that money hasn’t been spent yet! Zaslav hasn’t a clue what he’s doing – with respect to DC and the fans!
I think that’s the point, the money hasn’t been spent yet, so they can’t get a tax write off by shelving it.
I hope we’ll see this, but I agree that this makes little sense, particularly considering that Batgirl is a far better known DC character to the public than Black Canary— and Batgirl had some big name Oscar winning and nominated stars in it like Michael Keaton and JK Simmons. Jurnee Smollett is terrific, and again I hope this movie does get made, but you’re right- Zaslav is stumbling around making a total mess of things. I like that John Oliver called Zaslav out on his show this week saying it felt like Zaslav was burning down the network for fire insurance.
I mean, one explanation is that the early cuts of Batgirl were just bad and unsalvageable. They could throw a ton of money at fixing something that still isn’t going to be good, or the same amount of money at something that could possibly turn out to be much better.
The character might be (slightly) less famous, but the star is better known, and she and the writer have a history of delivering gold for the network.
your first line just doesn’t make sense to me
with a movie like Batgirl you’d have to think the studio would be seeing dailies or something before a test screening
and presumably with Leslie Grace and Keaton and JK Simmons and Brendan Fraizer … safe to assume studio bosses would be visiting the set
the whole point for being an executive is to hob nob with the A list talent (especially when it’s a very attractive young woman or … Keaton etc) — perks of the job
and after seeing Ms. Marvel by the same directors – it’s clear these guys know what they’re doing and turning in subpar work just doesn’t seem possible – they’re at the top of their game & very likely they’ll be directing more MCU projects soon — for anyone who hasn’t seen Ms Marvel – check it out
Have they delivered gold? It was acclaimed but cancelled after one season, so the Network doesn’t think they delivered. And it’s not like she has a long line of successes.
Batgirl was cancelled because it’s budget was already out of control by $20 million over it’s initially expected cost and it hadn’t even finished additional CGI,special effects and editing in post-production. Zaslak ,as new WBD CEO ,has made clear he’s not authorizing theatre dollar level investments on films meant to be on streaming and is more than willing to use tax-offsets to cancel streaming movies and series which do not look like they will bring in the profit to counter WBD’s large deficit. Black canary might have a chance IMO because the producers already know they have to keep the budget under control.
They let The Batman and Justice League go over budget….
And they couldn’t use either one as a tax write off because there were no acquisitions then. Not to mention they were straight to theater movies not streaming movies. And the Batman undoubtedly looked good with the early returns. Justice League was basically was they were basing and building their whole universe around, so they couldn’t cancel it. They probably would have been better off in the long term to scrap it and start over then, rather than the mess that followed, but at the time that was their “Avengers” they needed. They just rushed it and are still paying for it today.
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I wonder if they’re rework this into a series or try to make it theatrical. Unless it’s dirt cheap to make, I don’t see it being an HBOMax movie.
All the statements seemed to indicate they were getting away from movies that are direct-to-HBO – not just Batgirl but all of them. So I think you’re right that it might be redeveloped into a six-part series or something. Maybe theatrical but a short series makes more sense.
I’m still so confused by Scoob as well. Don’t parents still buy up those kinds of movies to distract the kids? Why not do direct to DVD with that one or something? Honestly seems like they do not know how to look at the big picture.
I’m guessing at this point they thought Batgirl was beyond repair and the re-shoots were gonna be too expensive to set it at the quality level they expect for a DC Movie (or, at least, for what they think is quality), with the new series and the movies still in early development they might be able to put them coherently in this “first 10 years plan” for the DC.
Big incognito at this point are the already established tv series…i do hope though, since many already in production, that they give the writers the chance to give clousure to the shows and not cancelling them abruptly like the massacre at CW
absolutely this is amazing news and i am so so so glad they didn’t cancel this
They definitely should not underestimate the power of original streaming movies. I think there could be a very big market for lower budget DC films. The Batgirl cancellation was a mistake.
But Batgirl was not a lower budget film. It was less than the budget given to DC films intending to be released as blockbuster international theatre releases but it was already costing more than the total cost of many international theatre film releases.For instance,the recent release of the movie “Elvis” had a total budget of $ 85 million.
I can’t see myself watching until she condemns her brother’s actions. It’s a shame because Lovecraft country was amazing.
Why should she have to condemn his actions? She didn’t do anything. He’s her brother. I wouldn’t expect her to say anything, especially if they’re close. But just because he did something wrong, you’re gonna hold it against her? That’s some twisted logic.
She has stated repeatedly she doesn’t believe what he did was wrong. How does repeatedly defending the false flagging a hate crime not impugn her character?
I agree. Family or not, her brother is a liar and she should admit it.
It’s not her business to say it. She’s not obligated to explain away anything.
She has nothing to do with what he did, and you had no problem watching that show which came out after the fake hate crime happened.
I doubt this is actually going forward, but it’s good PR to show another female super hero of color still getting some sort of project. They can easily just pull the plug at any moment before pre-production even starts.
I mean I hope it goes forward, she was by far the only good part of the Harley Quinn movie. But I seriously doubt it, if they plan is to start from scratch.
This. In development doesn’t mean production. They order and toss out scripts like tissue paper. Why spend money on a streamer you don’t want featuring the 3rd or 4th most important character in a movie that didn’t do great?
I thought they would not pursue DC movies for direct to streaming. Odd. Birds of Prey was not the best movie. Not sure we need a spinoff. But, I do think the Peacemaker spinoff series was better than the Suicide Squad movie.
DC has a wealth of heroes and bad guys and yet its in a huge mess and directionless. It could have gone the Marvel direction and done a bunch of television shows which compliment the movies to get hype up there.
Black canary is an amazing character and will make for an amazing movie especially if it explores her rich history with so many characters. Mainly Green arrow and wildcat.
Why should we believe anything they say?