If you’re unfamiliar with the concept of a “funeral screening”, so were the cast and crew members who gathered for secret showings of the new Batgirl movie this August. They were in all likelihood the last people ever to see the movie. The week before, Warner Bros had announced that Batgirl would never be released but would instead be destroyed, buried, perhaps read its last rites and cremated in a little bat-shaped coffin.
Seldom, if ever, has a studio spent $90m (£79m) on a movie only to scrap it before it ever saw the light of day. Especially not one that was widely anticipated (it was a superhero movie with “bat” in its title), and which was set to be a standard-bearer for inclusion. Batgirl herself was played by Dominican-American actor Leslie Grace – who would have become one of the first Latino screen superheroes. And Batgirl’s best friend, Alysia Yeoh, was played by Ivory Aquino. Both the character and the Filipina-American actor are trans women – another first.
