How Bad Could Have Batgirl Possibly Been?

A little over two years ago in the aftermath of Discovery's acquisition of Warner Brothers, it was announced that Batgirl would not be coming out either theatrically like Blue Beetle or exclusively streaming on what was then HBOMax as originally intended. The current co-CEO of DC Studios Peter Safran eventually said this was because the film would have negatively impacted the DC brand but when you look at the theatrically released DC films since then, one has to ask how that's even possible.

To use Batgirl's financials as a benchmark, the film cost $90 million to make. The conventional wisdom is that to turn a profit, a major release movie needs to make about 2.5 times its budget to be considered profitable. This is not 100% accurate because the studio does not take 100% of the ticket price and international distribution has different costs associated but for simplicity's sake, we will say that to be considered profitable, each movie we talk about needs to make over 2.5x the budget. Therefore, Batgirl would not have been considered profitable until it made $225 million. We will also be omitting any DC movie that came out before August 2022 from the conversation since the assertion by Safran is that Batgirl had to be canned because it would have damaged the DC brand, therefore implying anything that came before this was not as damaging as this would have been (see Wonder Woman 1984 and Zack Snyder's Justice League). This will also omit The Batman and The Suicide Squad since they both predate this announcement.

Two months after the cancellation, Black Adam came out. This movie had a budget of between $190 million and $260 million. For the sake of this, let's use the $190 million even though reportedly the $260 includes a lot of expensive reshoots. Using the 2.5x rule, the film needed a box office total of $475 million to turn a profit. The final box office total was $390 million so under our rule, this film lost about $85 million. Critically the movie has a 41 out of 100 on Metacritic and a 39% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Five months later in March 2023, DC released Shazam! Fury of the Gods. The budget is reported as between $110 and $125 million. Again, we will use the lower number so the movie would have needed to make $275 million to turn a profit. The final total was $132 million so this film lost $165 million. Critically, it also has a 47 on Metacritic and a 49 on Rotten Tomatoes.

Three months after that, DC released The Flash with a reported production budget of between $200 and $220 million meaning it would have needed to make $500 million to turn a profit. Its final tally was $266 million so this film lost $234 million. It's Metacritic was 55 and the Rotten Tomatoes score was 63.

Two months later Blue Beetle was released with a reported budget of between $104 and $125 million so it would turn a profit at the $260 million mark. It grossed $128 million so this was another $132 million loss. That said, Blue Beetle did perform well with critics earning a 61 on Metacritic and a 77 on Rotten Tomatoes.

The last of the DCEU movies came out in December as Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom arrived in theaters carrying a $205 million budget. This one earned the most money with $433 million, but considering it needed $513 million to break even, it still lost $80 million. Critically it ended up with a 42 on Metacritic and a 33 on Rotten Tomatoes.

Since this conversation is specifically about how Batgirl would have harmed the DC brand, not the DCEU brand, we have to address the latest failure with Joker: Folie a Deux. This movie currently has a Metacritic score of 45 and a Rotten Tomatoes score of 33. It had a budget of $200 million so it would need to make $500 million to be profitable and it has only made $165 million to date. It will likely have a hard time hitting the $200 million mark, let alone the $500 million to be profitable.

So on average, DC films have scored 48.5 on Metacritic, 48. 67 on Rotten Tomatoes, and lost an average of $139 million per movie. Considering that Batgirl would have turned a profit at $225 million, so long as it made $86 million in total including international at the box office, it would have lost less money than half the movies that came out since it was announced. Are we expected to believe that the movie wouldn't even have been able to do that? Are we expected to believe that it would have been received as well as Madame Web,  Morbius, Harold and the Purple Crayon, or Borderlands? With each passing DC movie that is released that costs more to make, loses more money, and is worse received, it becomes more and more apparent that there is more to the story behind the destruction of Batgirl than was officially stated.