Why would you scrap a movie that is all but finished before anyone except studio suits have had a chance to see it? The answer, for Hollywood bigwigs, is a tax write-off. In the last 18 months, Warner Bros has deleted a live-action Looney Tunes riff, Coyote vs Acme; the animated adventure Scoob! Holiday Haunt; and, most infamously, the $90m DC Extended Universe flick Batgirl. Now Netflix seems to be getting in on the act with news this week that the Halle Berry-led sci-fi tale The Mothership is also being axed before critics have had the chance to view it. Has it also fallen victim to the twisted machinations of nefarious accountants?
It’s probably fair to say that a cheesy-sounding Scooby Doo episode and a movie that would have starred John Cena as a lawyer going up against Wile E Coyote probably don’t count as monumental totems of 21st-century cinema that have now been lost for ever in the cruel mists of time. Still, a lot of people quite liked the idea of Batgirl, and ultimately felt cheated that the people who ponied up the money to get this thing made decided it was too risky to actually release.
