Last week, it was revealed that Warner Bros. Discovery had shelved a nearly $90 million budgeted superhero film with “Batgirl.” The movie confused many as the film was mostly completed, and on the company’s earnings call back on Thursday, it was stated they would only release films they “believed in.”
Director Kevin Smith, who has worked on many comic book movies or TV projects, has thrown his own two cents into the controversial move. His argument is the optics of throwing away an Afro-Latinx-led film while still eager to release Ezra Miller’s “Flash” movie despite the increasing disturbing headlines is rather nuts and ridiculous (the actor was arrested yet again just two days ago).
Smith talked about the bewildering hypocrisy of these decisions on his own YouTube podcast, Hollywood Babble-On.
“That is the baffling thing,” Smith said. “I don’t give a s*** how bad the ‘Batgirl’ movie is; nobody in that movie is complicated or has anything in their real life you have to market around. In ‘The Flash’ movie, we all know there’s a big problem! Flash is the Reverse-Flash in real life.”
READ MORE: ‘Flash’ Star Ezra Miller Charged In Vermont With Felony Burglary
If you’re not aware, Smith has had his own run-ins with comic book projects that didn’t come to fruition. Some of those include being tasked to help write a 1990s version of a “Superman” movie for producer Jon Peters and developing an animated “Howard The Duck” series for Hulu that Marvel Studios canceled when they took over the television division.
The filmmaker still isn’t convinced the quality was really the issue.
“It’s an incredibly bad look to cancel the Latina ‘Batgirl’ movie,” Smith said on his Hollywood Babble-On podcast. “I don’t give a shit if the movie was absolute f***ing dog s*** – I guarantee you that it wasn’t. The two directors [Bilall Fallah and Adil El Arbi] who directed that movie did a couple of episodes of ‘Ms. Marvel,’ and it was a wonderful f***ing show, and they had more money to do ‘Batgirl’ than they had to do an episode of ‘Ms. Marvel’ and stuff.”
“I love all the CW shows, but the CW shows show their budgetary constraints,” Smith said. “They said ‘Batgirl’ looked too cheap because it was a $90 million movie. How do you make a cheap-looking $90 million movie? If it looked slightly better than an episode of ‘Arrow’ then why couldn’t we see that?”
Smith, of course, is no stranger to sharing his opinions on geek culture as his directorial efforts from the 1990s, such as “Clerks,” “Mallrats,” and “Chasing Amy,” feature a multitude of commentary on things related to comic books and genre movies. “Mallrats” even included a cameo from Marvel Comics writer/editor Stan Lee long before he appeared in any of the Marvel pics. Check out the episode below.