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Brendan Fraser Again Praises Canceled Batgirl Film In New Interview
DC Studios co-head Peter Safran recently applauded the decision to shelve the movie.
Batgirl fans aren’t ready to stop mourning the abrupt cancelation of the nearly completed film, and neither is Brendan Fraser.
The Doom Patrolactor, who played supervillain Firefly in DC’s scrapped project, has been singing its praises throughout his press tour for The Whale. Most recently, he stopped to chat with Howard Stern, who brought up the ill-fated movie.
“Where is it?” Stern asked.
“It’s in a vault somewhere?” an upset-looking Fraser replied. “In the dumpster?”
Despite new DC Studios co-head Peter Safran’s recent insistence that though the decision was made to pull the plug on Batgirl before he and James Gunn were brought on, Warner Bros. Discovery made the right call, as the movie was “not releasable” and “would have hurt those people involved.”
Fraser wildly disagreed, praising the work of directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah and calling the movie “great.”
“Gotham never looked better cast as Glasgow, Scotland,” he continued. “You know, it’s decaying, and just gorgeous. It looks like it’s Gotham City. You know, it’s perfectly cast. You believe it, no matter where you look in the town, if you light it the right way.”
It’s clear from the way Fraser talks about both the role and the movie that it’s something he is very proud of, and that he’s disappointed things went down the way they did.
Although he has not seen the film himself, and seemed to suggest that a “garden variety test screening” of the very first, unfinished cut may not have gone over well — which is not uncommon and not actually a good indicator of how well a film may do upon actual release — he also said friends and coworkers of his who saw the movie “all say really good things about it.”
“This didn’t even get a fair shake. And that’s disappointing for obvious reasons, but moreover because little girls are gonna have to wait longer now before they can see a Batgirl who they can identify that says, ‘Hey she looks just like me, too,’ in Leslie Grace. And she was wonderful. Oh gosh, she was good,” Fraser added.
Whether Batgirl will ever see the light of day, the actor remains uncertain, although hopes are not high. But at least Fraser is using his renewed star power to keep talking about the movie and how cruel it was for WBD to pull the plug on everyone’s hard work at the nth hour.
People are calling Fraser's role in The Whale a comeback, as he believes he was blacklisted following sexual harassment claims he made against former Hollywood Foreign Press Association president, Phillip Berk. However, he has still done a lot of TV work in recent years, including playing Cliff Steele in HBO Max's Doom Patrol.
In the unreleased Batgirl film, Fraser played supervillain Firefly, aka Garfield Lynns, a former serviceman who became angry after his benefits were cut.
By all accounts, yes, Fraser is a really nice guy.
Rachel Kiley is presumably a writer and definitely not a terminator. She can usually be found crying over queerbaiting in the Pitch Perfect franchise or on Twitter, if not both.
Rachel Kiley is presumably a writer and definitely not a terminator. She can usually be found crying over queerbaiting in the Pitch Perfect franchise or on Twitter, if not both.
