“Batgirl”: These films also never made it to the cinema

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“Batgirl” and her precursors
Hollywood’s Walk of Shame: These films ended up in the poison closet

Leslie Grace was originally supposed to hit the big screen as Batgirl. The film has now been shelved.

© AFP

08/08/2022, 15:03

2 min reading time

“Batgirl” is worth 90 million dollars, but Warner Bros. has decided not to publish the superhero adventure. Despite the lavish budgets, these films never made it to the cinemas.

So far, Leslie Grace has been known mainly as a singer who celebrated success with Latin pop. “Bat Girl” should have been her breakthrough as an actress: the 27-year-old plays the leading role in the superhero film. But despite production costs of 90 million dollars, Warner Bros. decided to let the film disappear in the poison cupboard rather than bring it to the cinemas. This makes “Batgirl” one of the most expensive unreleased projects in Hollywood history.

But there are a number of other prominent film projects that never made it into the cinemas. And it affected prominent artists, such as comedian Jerry Lewis. He took part in 1972 “The Day the Clown Cried” the ambitious attempt to tell the story of a clown from the Holocaust. In the final scene, the clown ran hand in hand into the gas chamber together with a Jewish girl. Lewis himself pulled the ripcord: “I was deeply ashamed … my work was bad … both as a writer, as a director, as an actor and as a producer … nothing was good,” said the artist, who died in 2017, later.

Misconduct by Louis CK and Bill Murray

While no one has seen Jerry Lewis’ failed work to this day, another comedian did take it a step further: Louis CK had the comedy-drama he wrote and filmed himself “I Love You Daddy” screened at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival. Shortly thereafter, allegations were made that the comedian should have sexually harassed women. The distribution company The Orchid then withdrew the film.

Personal misconduct also brought Aziz Ansari’s debut film “Being Mortal” Case in point: Bill Murray is said to have behaved so badly on the set that the studio stopped production. “I did something that I thought would be funny, but it didn’t go over well,” Murray said ruefully. Whether it will continue at some point is still in the stars.

Wolfgang Peterson turns 80

“Das Boot” and other books that became cinema blockbusters


Lothar-Günther Buchheim: The boat "Of the 40,000 U-boat men in World War II, 30,000 never returned"the US audience clapped with enthusiasm at this opening line than 1981 "The boat" was shown for the first time in a small preview in Los Angeles. After all, dead Nazis were a good thing. There was a standing ovation and sad faces during the credits. Wolfgang Petersen had turned her perspective within two and a half hours. It took viewers down into the depths in a way no submarine film before or since has ever done. How do you authentically capture the oppressive narrowness of a steel pipe? The stuffy air? The fear of death of the men crammed together 150 meters or deeper in the icy Atlantic? The first thoughts on the cinematic implementation of Buchheims "The boat" still provided for a classic submarine backdrop, filmed from the outside in. Wolfgang Petersen wanted to be right in the middle of it and his cameraman Jost Vacano had the right idea. He used the then little-known Steady-Cam. With the help of this technique, the camera could be held out of the hand without shaking. Previously, this required rails mounted on the floor. Vacano ran through the boat at eye level with the actors with his self-developed lightweight camera. This allows for perspectives that have never been seen before. For the first time, the viewer was right in the middle of the action. An ingenious technique, without which the film would probably have turned out exactly like the book: realistically dull for long stretches. If you don't want to read for yourself, you can "The boat" as an audio book by Dietmar Bär.

Lothar-Günther Buchheim: The boat
“Of the 40,000 U-boat men in World War II, 30,000 did not return”, the US audience applauded enthusiastically at this opening line when “Das Boot” was shown in Los Angeles for the first time in a small preview in 1981. After all, dead Nazis were a good thing. There was a standing ovation and sad faces during the credits. Wolfgang Petersen had turned her perspective within two and a half hours. It took viewers down into the depths in a way no submarine film before or since has ever done.
How do you authentically capture the oppressive narrowness of a steel pipe? The stuffy air? The fear of death of the men crammed together 150 meters or deeper in the icy Atlantic? The first considerations for the cinematic implementation of Buchheim’s “Das Boot” still envisaged a classic submarine backdrop, filmed from the outside in. Wolfgang Petersen wanted to be right in the middle of it and his cameraman Jost Vacano had the right idea. He used the then little-known Steady-Cam. With the help of this technique, the camera could be held out of the hand without shaking. Previously, this required rails mounted on the floor. Vacano ran through the boat at eye level with the actors with his self-developed lightweight camera. This allows for perspectives that have never been seen before. For the first time, the viewer was right in the middle of the action. An ingenious technique, without which the film would probably have turned out exactly like the book: realistically dull for long stretches. If you don’t want to read for yourself, you can “The Boat” as an audio book presented by Dietmar Bär.

More


Big, big was the motto of Chinese billionaire Jon Jiang. He not only put 130 million dollars in the 3D fantasy film “Empires of the Deep”. Instead, he immediately planned a trilogy that would take on role models like “Lord of the Rings”. In the end, it was just a film – and nobody even got to see it: the mammoth work could not find a distribution partner.

And a well-known German producer also failed with a film project in 1994: Bernd Eichinger, together with producer legend Roger Corman, wanted the first live-action adaptation of the Marvel superhero team “The Fantastic Four” bring to the cinemas. That failed, but the damage should have been limited: The budget was only 1.5 million dollars – the 60th part of what “Batgirl” devoured.

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