Everyone, including the American government, are all up in arms after it was announced that Batgirl would be shelved by Warner Bros and DC. But what if it wasn’t? After all, Stephen Hawking believed in alternate universes, so surely there is a world similar to our own that announced the film’s release. What if Batgirl was released, would the film be a success? Or did DC and Warner Bros make the right decision to shelve it because it was going to flop anyway?
Reddit user u/Auelogic asked on r/DC_Cinematic, who would be blamed if DC released Batgirl and ended up becoming a flop. However, most fans don’t think the movie would become a giant failure. They predict that most fans would watch it, regardless of how it turns out.
Most fans answered that people would watch Batgirl out of spite and to prove Warner Bros wrong. And, not gonna lie, that might be the biggest and riskiest marketing move DC has ever made: Tell everyone the film’s not coming out due to failed test screenings, then release it because of “backlash” and “fan outcry.” Suddenly, people would flood theaters just to prove to Warner Bros. can compete with Marvel.
However, other fans argued that the film needs to be watched repeatedly for the film to be a success.
Others reminded the OP that Batgirl wasn’t meant to come out in theaters. It was initially supposed to be released on HBO Max, meaning they need a lot of people on the streaming platform to watch the film. According to Statista, around 48.6 people subscribed to HBO Max during Q1 of 2022. That’s nowhere near either Netflix or Disney, both of which have over 200 million subscribers. To those people, they believed that Warner Bros probably made the right choice.
But to most fans, even if the film did come out and ended up becoming a flop, there’s a high chance that fans wouldn’t blame anyone. The same can be said of other superhero films that ended up bombing the box office. Looking at you Morbius.
It’s a shame that Batgirl ended up being shelved by Warner Bros. But considering how almost anything relating to the Batman universe ended up finding success in its own way, I wouldn’t be surprised if Batgirl received similar results. Maybe it was a good decision to shelve it, as it was meant to be an HBO Max exclusive. But hey, there will be an internal screening of the film for Warner Bros staff. Maybe an insider would tell us if the film could have been a success or a failure.
