Having been chewed up and spat out in the harshest of circumstances by DC and Warner Bros., directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah would be well within their rights to wash their hands of the superhero genre forevermore after the way they were treated on Batgirl.
After going to great lengths being recruited to direct off the critical and commercial success of Bad Boys for Life, the duo dedicated years of their lives to developing, shooting, and entering post-production on the $90 million origin story for Leslie Grace’s Barbara Gordon, only for their corporate overlords to pull the plug and consign it to the history books as an unseen curio in order to save money on taxes.
Under normal circumstances, you’d imagine the pair would be reticent to even orbit DC’s atmosphere ever again, but as they revealed to Insider, they’d be more than happy for a second bite of the cherry were it ever to come their way.
“There’s still a feeling of unfinished business. Our love for DC, Batman, Batgirl, Gotham City, it’s so big that, as fans, we could never say no to another project. If we got another chance to be part of it, we’d do it. We didn’t get our day in court. We still want to make our case.”
It’s up for debate as to whether it would sting more or less for James Gunn to extend an olive branch in their direction, or for Adil and Bilall to be completely ignored, shunned, and passed over as the new and hopefully improved DCEU begins to take shape. With another Bad Boys on the way they’ve at least got a surefire hit stashed in their back pocket, but maybe the other comic book juggernaut would be the best course of action after their stellar work on Ms. Marvel.
Published: Sep 12, 2023 02:01 am