When it was first announced that the DCEU’s Blue Beetle was being pulled from HBO Max and getting sent to theaters with a prime August 2023 release date, a lot of fans were left wondering why Batgirl wasn’t given the same treatment.
A big budget comic book blockbuster headlined by a longtime fan favorite making their live-action debut, which boasted a pair of directors hot off the massive success of Bad Boys for Life, the beloved Brendan Fraser as the villain, and Michael Keaton’s return as Batman seems like exactly the sort of high-profile event that would be destined to do solid business on the big screen.
Of course, we don’t know what the future holds for Batgirl with any sort of specificity now that the Discovery merger has been finalized, and that’s without The Flash‘s delay to summer 2023 creating questions as to whether or not Leslie Grace’s bow as Barbara Gordon will even make sense should it arrive before the Scarlet Speedster’s standalone vehicle.
With all that in mind, it doesn’t come as much of a shock to hear Matthew Belloni of Puck report that the new regime are considering abandoning HBO Max entirely for Batgirl, in favor of unleashing it upon a substantially wider audience. None of this is confirmed or official, though, but the more we’ve been hearing about the heavily-hyped effort, the more it makes sense to pivot to theatrical.
Either way, it shouldn’t be too long until things become clearer, especially with Discovery beginning to put its stamp on the company from top to bottom.