DC’s ‘Strange Adventures’ joins ‘Batgirl’ in the HBO Max cancellation frenzy

The list of DC properties getting the axe over at HBO Max continues to grow, with Strange Adventures being the latest casualty.

The show was supposed to be an anthology series that featured some of DC’s lesser known characters. Clerks filmmaker Kevin Smith, who was supposed to direct and co-write an episode, confirmed the decision on his podcast Hollywood Babble-On.

Smith put the show’s axing in the same vein as Warner Bros. Discovery’s cancelling of the Batgirl movie, which already cost the studio an estimated $90 million. Strange Adventures actually never made it that far, however, and was axed before the merger became final.

The episode Smith was writing was supposed to be a collaboration with Supergirl writer Eric Carrasco. It would have featured both Jimmy Olsen from the Superman universe, and villain Bizarro. The plan was to get Nicholas Cage to play Bizzarro.

Smith and Cage actually have a pretty good history together, as they were both at one point in the ’90s attached to the Tim Burton-led Superman Lives – something that ultimately never happened but did result in a documentary called The Death of Superman Lives: What Happened?

“[Dropping Strange Adventures] kind of made sense to me — nobody necessarily knows these characters, and it sounded like an expensive show,” Smith said. Strange Adventures was going to cost between $16 and $20 million per episode, and was going to be produced by Berlanti Productions. That company is also handling another DC property that is so far on track – Green Lantern.

Berlanti also handles the TV version of The Flash, season three of Superman & Lois, and Gotham Knights over at The CW. Those are all moving ahead as planned.

Strange Adventures was supposed to be “our biggest DC show ever made,” Smith said. He also shared that even if it won’t end up over at HBO Max, the property could come out in another medium.

“Don’t feel bad for me, I got paid. We’re talking about taking it over to DC and doing it as a comic book, because we f***ing took the time to write the script. Might as well hand it to an artist and let them draw it.”

He also said getting rid of Batgirl was a bad idea: “It’s an incredibly bad look to cancel the Latina Batgirl movie. I don’t give a sh*t if the movie was absolute fucking dog sh*t — I guarantee you that it wasn’t. I love all the CW shows, but the CW shows show their budgetary constraints. They said Batgirl looked too cheap because it was a $90 million movie. How do you make a cheap-looking $90 million movie? If it looked slightly better than an episode of Arrow then why couldn’t we see that?”