Leslie Grace denies that axed 'Batgirl' was unreleasable: ‘The film I got to see … was incredible'

Leslie Grace disagrees that Batgirl was unreleasable.

The actress — who played the heroine in the $90-million film — is speaking out about the way she found out the HBO Max film had been axed by Warner Bros. in August for the benefit of a tax break. She also responds to DC Studios's new co-chair Peter Safran standing by the decision last month, calling the film, co-directed by Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, "not releasable."

"I found out like the rest of you," Grace, 28, told Variety. “And then my phone just started blowing up."

She compared the feeling to "deflating a balloon." However, she was "so sure of the magic that happened — in my experience and what I saw in my cast, in our team — that I was like, 'This must be some crazy thing that we have no control over.'"

Her co-star Brendan Fraser, who played her nemesis Firefly in the project, told the outlet he thought he was “getting punked" after seeing the headlines. "When we were expecting XYZ amount of support and money to expand scenes — to do pickup shots and those kinds of things — that was a gut punch. But then we learned that it was in the interest of writing down some debt? That part really stung.”

Grace addressed Safran's comments, made on Jan. 30, about it being the right decision because "it would have hurt DC. It would have hurt those people involved." She said she had meetings with Warner Bros. Film Group CEOs Pam Abdy and Mike De Luca, who shared what they felt about the project — "things that were out of their hands, plans and budgets that were set in place before they were even part of the team."

"There are a lot of things that I learned through the experience about moviemaking, that as an actress you have no control over," she said. "They weren’t really specific on anything creative in terms of what they felt about the film and how it would’ve hurt DC creatively. But I’m a human being, and people have perceptions and people read things. And when words are expressed very lightly about work that people really dedicated a lot of time to — not just myself but the whole crew — I can understand how it could be frustrating."

Grace said that the "one thing I asked for" was to see the film, which had poor test screenings. (One criticism was that it played like a TV pilot and not like a big film.)

"I got to see the film as far as it got to; the film wasn’t complete by the time that it was tested," she said. "There were a bunch of scenes that weren’t even in there. They were at the beginning of the editing process, and they were cut off because of everything going on at the company. But the film that I got to see — the scenes that were there — was incredible. There was definitely potential for a good film, in my opinion."

She did acknowledge that there were obstacles — just none that she thought would lead to such a drastic resolution.

"I’m not going to lie to you. In every film, there are obstacles, and our film was nothing short of that," she said. "Half of the shoot was night shoots in Scotland, where it never stops raining. So there were obstacles, but at the end of the day, because of the incredible crew, nothing that ever got in the way of us delivering what we knew we wanted to deliver for this film. At least from what I was able to see."

Safran and his co-chairman at DC, James Gunn, weren’t there when the decision about Batgirl was made and haven't reached out to her, she said. However, she said she's "definitely had conversations about Batgirl’s future and how Batgirl can make a resurgence" not talking specifics.

"We’ll just see where that takes us; I can’t say one way or the other if that is a reality at this point," she said. "I can’t speak too much about a future for Batgirl or guarantee anything. The last thing that I would want to do is give folks any kind of inkling of something that I have not much control over — as we’ve learned."

As she moves on to other projects, including QCode's new comedy-thriller podcast series How to Win Friends and Disappear People, she remains "optimistic" about her Batgirl experience.

"I just really leaned on the beauty of the idea that I got to have this experience in my life," she said. "Even though I would’ve loved to share that with the rest of the world, nothing can take that experience away from us."

Batgirl was also to co-star Michael Keaton as Batman and J.K. Simmons as Commissioner Gordon.

According to reports at the time, Warner Bros. Discovery not releasing the movie allowed the studio to benefit from a tax break by writing off the loss of the film. In an October SEC filing, it was revealed the company had written off between $2 billion and $2.5 billion worth of content in that time range, between July and September, in efforts to restructure its business. The animated sequel Scoob! Holiday Haunt was also scrapped.