Batgirl, a USD 90 million budget movie, was recently pulled from the DC Extended Universe. The movie won’t get to see the light of the day. Shocking, isn’t it? This cancellation is one of the many failures of Warner Brothers and DC when it comes to the big screen. The Suicide Squad, and the Justice League movie by Joss Whedon are some of DC’s earlier mistakes.
The CEO of Warner Brothers, David Zaslav, said “We are not going to put a movie out unless we believe in it. We have done a reset when it comes to the release strategy behind movies of any kind”. He further added, “There will be a team with a 10-year plan focusing just on DC”.
It means that the Batgirl movie either did not fit the direction the studio will be taking, or the movie was just terrible. Woke culture has been taking over popular TV. Female driven roles are all the hype, with many women taking place of what used to be male dominated roles: Ghostbusters is one example.
But the point of concern for DC is lack of direction. DC did not want to follow the footsteps of its rival, Marvel: create solo hero movies and have them come together in an ensemble. But so far, except for Aqua man, DC movies failed to achieve the same level of success as Marvel movies. May movies bombed at the Box Office, and multiple controversies involving Warner Brothers and Zack Snyder have hurt the DC brand a lot. People are also boycotting Aquaman 2 after the highly covered, televised trial of Johnny Depp vs. Amber Heard ruled in the favour of the plaintiff.
What DC needs now is to rebrand itself, and take a different approach like Thor. The first two Thor movies were a miss, but the third one went in a different direction, with Thor Ragnarok having a comedic inclination. Doing so will help DC overcome its weaknesses, and the controversies surrounding the brand, including Amber Heard (Mera), Gal Gadot (Wonder Woman) and Ezra Miller (the Flash).
by Amna Sheikh
(sheikh_amna@outlook.com)
