J.K. Simmons spent months in Scotland playing Commissioner Gordon in a Batgirl movie that was fully shot, deep in post-production, and then erased from existence. Four years later, he still hasn't seen a single minute of the finished movie.
The actor addressed the film's infamous 2022 cancellation during a conversation on Josh Horowitz's Happy Sad Confused podcast, where he called it "one of the strangest stories" in his career. Asked directly whether he'd ever watched the finished movie, Simmons was blunt: "No."
Warner Bros. Discovery scrapped the nearly $90 million film just weeks before its planned release, choosing a tax write-down over putting it in theaters or on HBO Max. The decision, made under new CEO David Zaslav, stunned Hollywood and drew public frustration from star Leslie Grace, who played the title role opposite Michael Keaton's Batman and Simmons' Commissioner Gordon.
Simmons rejected the primary reason rumored for the movie's demise, namely that it had been deemed "irredeemable" by those who saw it. "Apparently one test audience saw it, and it's not like it was a bad score from the test audience," he said on the podcast. "It was a whatever, a business decision." He drew a contrast with his other DC work, noting that Justice League "had its own drama attached to it" before Zack Snyder's director's cut later won over fans, "which is really, you know, a lot of fun."
Despite the film's fate, Simmons spoke fondly of the experience itself, including his time with directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah. "We really had a good time making it," he said, "and thought it was going to be a fun superhero movie." He called stepping into the role "an exciting prospect to be part of the origin story of Batgirl."
The film's cancellation remains a rare case of a studio abandoning a nearly complete, big-budget movie for financial reasons rather than creative ones, a decision Warner Bros. Discovery attributed to a "strategic shift" around the DC universe and HBO Max. Grace, El Arbi and Fallah have all previously voiced public disappointment, with the directors writing on Instagram that they were "saddened and shocked" and hoped fans might someday see the film.
Simmons just seems bemused by the whole debacle. Asked whether he'd ever glimpsed so much as a rough cut, his again answered with J Jonah Jameson bluntness: "It doesn't exist. It's in a vacuum." He didn't press for more, and he doesn't sound like he plans to. With The Westies now streaming and Invincible still drawing new fans his way, Batgirl remains one credit among more than 200 that he's simply learned to let go.
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