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Kevin Smith says it's 'baffling' that Warner Bros. canceled Batgirl but not The Flash
Among all the many questions that were raised by Warner Bros.' sudden cancellation of its Batgirl movie last week, one of the hardest to answer is why the studio is still going ahead with its The Flash movie with controversial star Ezra Miller. Filmmaker and nerd guru Kevin Smith called the decision "baffling" on the latest episode of his podcast Hollywood Babble-On.
"That is the baffling thing," Smith said. "I don't give a s--t 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."
Warner Bros. Pictures; Leslie Grace/Instagram Kevin Smith said Warner Bros. going ahead with Ezra Miller's 'Flash' movie while shelving Leslie Grace's 'Batgirl' movie is 'baffling'
Miller first appeared as the Flash in a brief cameo role in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice before co-starring in 2017's Justice League. Their solo film was first announced in 2014 but has been in prolonged development ever since, with multiple directors cycling on and off the project over the years.
Just as The Flash finally seemed like it was really happening, Miller started getting arrested for several alleged crimes. Over the past eight months, they have been arrested in Hawaii twice, accused of grooming someone since they were 12 years old, accused of harassing a minor and brandishing a gun in front of their family, and exposing young children to guns and weed on their Vermont farm. Some of these accusations have produced warrants or restraining orders, which authorities have had difficulty serving to Miller.
By contrast, no one involved in the Batgirl film — which starred Leslie Grace as the titular superhero and featured Michael Keaton as Batman — has been accused of any crimes by anyone in Hawaii. Directors Adil El Arbi and Billal Fallah are just coming off Disney+'s acclaimed Ms. Marvel series, for which they helmed several episodes.
"It's an incredibly bad look to cancel the Latina Batgirl movie," Smith said. "I don't give a s--t if the movie was absolute f---ing dog s--t — I guarantee you that it wasn't. The two directors 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."
Smith also talked about what the Batgirl cancellation signals for other planned HBO Max superhero projects, like the Strange Adventures anthology series he had worked on. Smith discussed his proposal for an episode that would have focused on the backwards-Superman known as Bizarro, and that they were pursuing Nicolas Cage for the role. That now seems scrapped, though Smith says he and his co-writer might try to turn their script into a DC comic.
Watch the full episode of Smith's podcast above.
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