It was announced in August that Batgirl, staring Leslie Grace, would no longer go ahead (Picture: Getty/Instagram/@LeslieGrace)
Leslie Grace has spoken at length for the first time about DC’s decision to scrap the Batgirl movie she’d already filmed.
The 28-year-old star played the lead under directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah’s guidance, but in August, Warner Bros. abruptly scrapped the film despite its $80million (£66m) budget in a bid to ‘cut costs’.
Leslie has now revealed she found out about the move – first reported in a US newspaper – ‘like everyone else’, not via correspondence from the studio.
When news broke last year that the film had been scrapped, fans were devastated and angry and even the directors said they were ‘traumatised’.
Speaking in a new interview, Leslie said: ‘I found out like the rest of you. And then my phone just started blowing up.’
The actress was speaking to Variety, with the publication noting that news of Batgirl’s cancellation was first reported in the New York Post.
Leslie has now revealed she found out about the move ‘like everyone else’ (Picture: Robyn Beck / AFP)
After it was announced that the flick would be scrapped, Leslie shared photos of herself in costume on social media (Picture: Instagram/@LeslieGrace)
Asked what was going through her mind at the time, Leslie compared the sensation to a ‘deflating balloon’ but added: ‘I tend to be a very optimistic and positive person in these types of circumstances, and I just really leaned on the beauty of the idea that I got to have this experience in my life.’
When asked whether she saw anything during shooting that suggested the movie ‘wasn’t going to work’, Leslie replied: ‘In every film, there are obstacles […] half of the shoot was night shoots in Scotland, where it never stops raining.’
She added: ‘So there were obstacles, but at the end of the day, nothing that ever got in the way of us delivering what we knew we wanted to deliver for this film.’
Speaking before Christmas, Adil and Bilall opened up about how the film’s axing affected them, with the latter telling Deadline at the Red Sea International Film Festival: ‘It was a traumatic experience.’
Asked what was going through her mind at the time, Leslie compared the sensation to a ‘deflating balloon’ (Picture: Instagram/@LeslieGrace)
Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah directed Batgirl (Picture: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)
He said that the pair went through ‘all the emotions’, with Adil adding: ‘At that time, it was pretty unprecedented, so it was like movie history, but in a crazy way.’
‘I was not done yet – far from it,’ Adil went on, clarifying that just one round of edits had been finished.
‘There was still a lot of work to be done but they just said it was financial decisions and so that’s that and the movie can never be released.’
On the impact on the actors and fellow crew members, Bilall continued: ‘But we got so much support from the whole industry from directors to screenwriters to studio people that really supported us through this really difficult time and that we felt that we were not alone, and that’s positive.’
When announcing that Batgirl would not be taken forward to release, a spokesperson said last summer: ‘The decision to not release Batgirl reflects our leadership’s strategic shift as it relates to the DC universe and HBO Max. Leslie Grace is an incredibly talented actor and this decision is not a reflection of her performance.
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‘We are incredibly grateful to the filmmakers of Batgirl and Scoob! Holiday Haunt and their respective casts and we hope to collaborate with everyone again in the near future.’
Metro.co.uk has reached out to DC for comment.
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The movie was cancelled in August.
