As the fallout from Justice League continues, it’s clear that the DCEU is going to be a very different place moving forward. With the team-up pic failing to impress critics and not doing much at the box office, either, it seems that the folks over at the studio have gone back to the drawing board in an attempt to figure out what’s the best way to continue on with their burgeoning cinematic universe.
Currently, there hasn’t been any kind of official announcements, and though the franchise won’t crumble just because Justice League turned out to be a bit of a dud, there will be ramifications from all this and it seems that the studio’s upcoming Batgirl pic has lost its director. File this strictly under the rumor category for now, but Super Bros Movies reports that due to negative press surrounding his personal life, Warner Bros. has removed Joss Whedon from the project.
Now, apparently, this happened a few months back, before Justice League was released. However, part of the reason for their decision to kick him from the film also had to do with the fact that the studio knew JL wasn’t going to be a hit and wasn’t pleased with Whedon’s work on it. From what we understand, he rushed through a lot of the reshoots and everything was pretty chaotic under his watch, leaving WB feeling uneasy about trusting him with Batgirl.
Again, this remains unconfirmed for now, but the project has been called into question quite a bit lately, with numerous rumors popping up over the past few months pointing to it not happening anymore. Now, with Justice League being labelled a disappointment, and Ben Affleck’s Batman possibly on his way out of the DCEU, it’s looking more and more likely that the focus will shift away from the Dark Knight and his Bat Family and more towards characters like Wonder Woman.
Chalk that up as speculation for now, but again, things certainly don’t sound too promising for Batgirl at the moment and it’s easy to see why WB may want to distance themselves from Whedon. Hopefully the studio will come out and release an official statement on their future plans sooner rather than later, but given their tendency to remain silent on these types of things, we wouldn’t hold our breath for that to happen.