It was the shot heard around the world – or at least around the corridors of social media. This week, Warner Bros put a bullet through the head of Batgirl, cancelling the film’s release when it was approaching completion. It was a decision without any real precedent. Almost $100m (£82m) had been poured into production already; filming was completed. Michael Keaton was set to reprise the role of Batman for the first time in 30 years. Warner Bros attributed the decision to shelve it to a “strategic shift” by leadership; the pivot follows a sizable management change in the company’s upper echelons. But what everyone really heard, whether they know it or not, wasn’t a “bang” but a “pop”. For all intents and purposes, the great streaming bubble may have just burst.
The noteworthy thing about Batgirl, you see, was not that it was denied a theatrical release. This is sadly the case all too often with films now, even high-budget ones. If you’re worried something’s going to flop, stick it straight on streaming. (During the height of the pandemic, when cinema releases flopping was a nailed-on certainty, straight-to-streaming or hybrid releases were particularly rampant – films from Wonder Woman 1984 to Dune to The Matrix Resurrections all launched immediately on streaming in the US). The issue is that Warner Bros presumably decided there was more profit to be made in the tax write-offs that would come from abandoning the project entirely than there would be in dumping it on its HBO Max streaming service. And they’re not wrong.
