The fallout from the cancellation of Batgirl threatens to claim a new victim: apparently, Walter Hamada , current president of DC Films.
It has expressed a willingness to leave the studio and has consulted with lawyers.
Hamada, however, would have been convinced to stay in his place at least until 21 October, the release date of Black Adam . According to a source in The Hollywood Reporter , Hamada has not yet made a decision, but he is thinking about it.
Walter Hamada was to remain head of DC Films until 2023 . David Zaslav , the new president of Warner Bros. Discovery, however, has announced a ten-year plan to bring DC films to compete with rival Marvel, with the idea of making a “reset”. “DC is something we think we can improve,” Zaslav said during the recent shareholder call. The tensions were already mounting, in short, and evidently the cancellation of Batgirl was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
The tensions
An insider told THR that Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy , the two CEOs of Warner Bros. Pictures Group who are overseeing DC properties until Zaslav decides on new leadership, informed Hamada during a Black Adam test screening. that Batgirl would not be completed or released. Apparently, Hamada did not appreciate the fact that he had not been consulted prior to the decision and said he was concerned about the impact it would have on the people involved in the making of the film.
Batgirl isn’t the only DC project to have been canceled recently: In May, Warner Bros. Discovery canceled Wonder Twins just days after the cast ( KJ Apa and Isabel May ) was announced. It must be said, however, that the decision to cancel Batgirl was more shocking because the film was almost finished.
The Hamada management
Walter Hamada took over the presidency of DC Films in 2018, at a difficult time for the studio: Justice League had recently been released , which had not achieved the desired results at the box office. During its management, DC films took a very different direction than the Marvel universe, with films less closely intertwined ( The Suicide Squad , for example, a semi-reboot that kept some performers of the former) and others completely disconnected from the DCEU. ( Joker , The Batman ). But obviously David Zaslav wants to go back to competing directly with Marvel and create that shared universe that, until now, Warner / DC has never really managed to achieve.