Bad Film Reviews Sink BatGirl Even Before It Opens

Just as the film was in post-production, management at Warner Bros Discovery decided to pull the plug on the DC Comics film BatGirl, despite it having a reported budget of more than $100 million and stars Leslie Grace, Brendan Fraser, Michael Keaton and J.K. Simmons. The reviews must have been so bad that management felt that to even give it a streaming release on HBO Max, which would cost virtually nothing, was not worth the risk as it could tarnish the brand.

Instead of reshooting the parts that got unfavorable reviews from test panels, Warner decided that they would just eat the cost of production. At the same time, they also gave thumbs down to airing the animated film “Scoobi! Holiday Haunt” which was estimated to have a $40 million budget.

The move shows that President & CEO David Zaslav is not afraid to quickly pull the trigger on something he thinks will not work with the audience, something he already showed when he famously pulled the plug on CNN+ less than a month after it launched amid massive media hype.

Although new subscribers were given a 50% lifetime discount off of the $5.99/month retail price point, only 150K people signed up for the service initially and Zaslov canceled the budget for the service which was expected to burn through $1 billion in its first four years before hitting break-even.

Warner Bros. Discovery is under financial pressure, with Zaslav promising $3 billion in cost savings from the merger and The New York TimesNYT
reporting that CNN was on track to see its profit decline below $1 billion, the first time this has happened since 2016.

More clues are likely to emerge about their cost-cutting strategy on the company’s second quarter call on August 4. One area which is likely to be hit is cable networks. It would not be surprising to see the company shut down several cable networks whose outlook is bleak.

Cord cutting and cord shaving continues to happen at a rapid clip. That means that every year networks will lose paying subscribers, eventually putting many of them at risk of going cash flow negative unless they can cut costs rapidly in anticipation of losing more subscribers.