What a waste: The practically finished "Batgirl" film will not be shown in cinemas or on streaming platforms. Warner Bros. is said to have already invested 90 million US dollars in the project. It's not the first film to suffer this fate.
Warner Bros. has recently canceled not only "Batgirl", but also the sequel to the 2020 animated film "Scoop!". And apparently the creators themselves were the last to know: producer and screenwriter Tony Cervone (55) posted a screenshot of the headline on the Hollywood Reporter website on Wednesday with the words: "I'm afraid that's true. [... ] My heart is more than broken."
The first live-action adaptation of the Marvel superhero team "The Fantastic Four" from 1994 has not yet seen the darkness of the cinema halls. Bernd Eichinger (61) and Roger Corman (96) acted as producers here, the publication was stopped a week before the theatrical release. There are no official reasons for this, but all the more rumours. Perhaps Eichinger only had the film made with a budget of $1.5 million so as not to lose his production rights, which would otherwise have expired. Other rumors have it that the film was so bad that Marvel paid Eichinger not to show it. After all, a documentary emerged from the misery: "Doomed!: The Untold Story of Roger Corman's Fantastic Four".
"Hippie Hippie Shake" was destined to be a hit: Sienna Miller (40) and Cillian Murphy (46) in the leading roles, set in 1960s London and based on a true story. But it wasn't meant to be. The production was repeatedly postponed for various reasons, the directors and screenwriters changed several times. The third attempt to complete the film took place in autumn 2007 - but director Beeban Kidron (61) also gave up in 2009 due to "creative differences" in post-production.
Another film with a top-class cast was (or is) "Being Mortal", on which Bill Murray (71), Seth Rogen (40) and Aziz Ansari (39) worked, among others. Whether the film adaptation of the novel will ever be completed is currently in the stars, however, after Murray is said to have misbehaved on the set. "I did something that I thought would be funny, but it didn't go over well," Murray said in an interview with CNBC in May. "The film studio wanted to do the right thing, so they wanted to check everything, investigate, and stopped production." For three months now there has been no news about the project, which was half-finished and should be in cinemas in 2023.
After "Avatar" was a huge hit, Chinese billionaire Jon Jiang reportedly pumped $130 million into a 3D fantasy film called "Empires of the Deep" since 2010. For the planned trilogy with role models like "Lord of the Rings", the cineaste Jiang wrote the screenplay himself. And otherwise he seems to have precise ideas about the film - which led to numerous arguments with the dedicated Hollywood professionals. Monica Bellucci, actually planned for the leading role, quickly got out again, a total of ten screenwriters revised the screenplay, and several directors left the mammoth project.
A very different fate befell Quentin Tarantino with one of his first films. "My Best Friend's Birthday" only cost $5,000 but was largely destroyed in a fire. 36 of the original 70 minutes of the film were shown at film festivals, but can otherwise only be found in the depths of the internet.
