$90M Batgirl Movie Deep-Sixed for Extreme Wokeness

BUCK: Fun topic of conversation, especially right now, given what we have just seen here with this Batman movie. In case you were wondering — and we gotta find a way to see this thing. Somebody has to find the means to get this into the public domain so that we will be able to watch this Batman movie. They spent $90 million on a Batgirl film, $90 million, that they just bailed on entirely. Think about this — and that’s a lot of money, right?

I think we can all agree, that’s a lot of cash to lay out for something. And there’s nothing coming out of it. Warner Brothers executives have said… Well, what they’re saying is I am proud of all the hard work, the intention of all our incredible cast and crew, yada yada yada. Yeah. This thing was a stinker, obviously. Man, I wish I could see this. It was going to be the first ever female, Latina, big-budget, female superhero film, I think, is what they were…

Or maybe just the first female Latina Batman, Batgirl, Batperson, as the case may be. This was gonna be the first time that they had done this. So as we keep talking about, as we keep telling you, there is this wokeness. There is this wokeness desire that pushes a lot of the decision-making for things like this. What gets greenlit as a project. And it’s not just about the bottom line is, folks. There’s ideology behind this, but there’s also fear.

If you’re a Warner Brothers executive, if you’re a Netflix or Amazon Prime or if you’re an executive at any of these places that are greenlighting massive creative projects and you are insufficiently woke — as in pushing the trans agenda, as in dramatically increasing visual diversity on the screen of actors who are actors from the BIPOC community. So you need the BIPOC community.

You need the LGBTQIA+ community to be dramatically represented, overrepresented in your projects, unless you get fired. And I’ll tell you, a lot of these things, a lot of these media jobs people have — especially on the executive side, man — you get all this great pay. It’s a hard job to get. It’s a great job to have, millions of dollars, stock options. You’re important, you’re powerful, people suck up to you all the time.

They don’t want to lose those jobs. So there’s the people that want to do it because they really believe in it, and then there are people that go along with it or that push it because, you know, they just want to keep the house in Malibu and the Hamptons and the ski place in Aspen and all that stuff, right? So that’s how you get to a…

I mean, I can’t review it because they’re just deep sixing it. They’re just dropping the original of this film in the bottom of Davy Jones’ Locker, right? They’re gonna take it out in the ocean and just drop the tapes, so to speak. They’re gonna act like this never happened. That is amazing. This is the biggest swing and a miss on a movie. Entirely miss, right? It’s not just… Box office bombs are when they spent a lot of money, and they lose a ton of money.

That’s a box office bomb. This is something else. This is more like a box office reactor meltdown. It’s like it never even got out to be deployed. This is something else. So I wish I could see it, and I’m sure at some point someone’s gonna find a way to get this thing out — to get this movie, this Batgirl movie out there — so that we can all watch it and check it out. But I was looking at this.

This is just… There’s different ways to calculate this. This is off of, you know, just the Wikipedia list. Now, Wikipedia’s got a lot of politicization, and you can’t trust everything Wikipedia. I think on this, though, on box office bombs, is probably pretty straightforward. But this was the first list that came up and I was just looking to see some of these… I gotta tell you, I was pretty bummed that on this list you have The 13th Warrior with Antonio Banderas, which is I believe loosely based on Eaters of the Dead by Michael Crichton.

I could be wrong on that one. But I saw The 13th Warrior. It’s not good. Don’t get me wrong. But it’s not that bad as a movie from 1999. Antonio Banderas is also playing an Arab guy, which you feel like there’s less of that these days. I remember I was… I’m being serious. In high school, we had a film study module. It wasn’t really a full course. I think they called it a module or something like that, so it was like a half course.

Once a week for an hour or something, we had a film course, and we saw Rambo: First Blood Part II, and the professor pointed out that a large number… This is what he told us, at least, the film professor… A large number of the extras in that movie, supposedly in Vietnam, were of the Latinx community. So they were miscasting people, which now you’re not allowed to do.

You know, you won’t get away with that the same way that it used to be considered okay in the early days of theater. Everything’s changed so much. Let me see, 47 Ronin? Never saw that one. 13th Warrior lost close to $100 million dollars. Adjusted for inflation, it’s a $100 million loss. So this Batgirl, $90 million loss, is one of the biggest film losses of all time and never even get released. Right?

So it grossed… It’s getting a zero gross and a $90 million budget. Now, 47 Ronin, I don’t know. Any of you guys…? I don’t even know what that did. Did any of you see that or know…? (interruption) No? Ronin is a good movie. Yeah, Ronin is a good movie. You’ve heard of it. Okay. Ronin is a good movie. I think there’s… Is it 29 Assassins, Mike? Would you…? Check for me, Producer Ali. There’s a movie like 19 Assassins or 29 Assassins.

It’s a samurai, sort of Ninja movie that is subtitled. I’m gonna tell you right now, the… (interruption) What’s it called? 13…? (interruption) Right. So there’s a 13th Warrior, which is terrible… I mean, I kind of… Look, I’m an Antonio Banderas fan so I’m a little bit shaky on how much, but it’s not a good movie. 13 Assassins is awesome. 13 Assassins is, like, in Seven Samurai category of phenomenal film.

I’m telling you, Producer Mike, add it to the list. First the Last Kingdom on Netflix, but then check out 13 Assassins. Other ones on here, The Adventures of Pluto Nash, that was 2002. That lost a hundred… Oh, these aren’t in order of the biggest lost. So 13… Oh, no. They kind of are. Adventures of Pluto Nash, that had Eddie Murphy, right? Yeah. That’s one of those movies where you saw the trailer…

I saw the trailer for it in the movie theater, and you were like, “That looks like the worst movie ever made,” and I was right. That’s up there. Send us a note ClayAndBuck.com. Please subscribe, become a subscriber, and then you can send us direct emails. We’ll see it. What is, for you, the worst box office bomb of all time? Now, that’s not the worst movie of all time. That’s a whole other conversation.

But the worst box office bomb — meaning a movie that sucked and lost so much money that you consider it the biggest bomb ever — there’s a lot on this list. Battleship, believe it or not, is on here, which I know some people kind of liked. I thought $643,000! I was like, “Wait. There’s just aliens, no explanation, and now the battleships are…” It’s almost, though, so bad it’s good and so bad it’s good territory.

Gigli. Oh, wow, Gigli lost $106 million when adjusted for inflation. It’s hard to make a movie that has basically no special effects and lose that much money. The only movie… This is always… I always thought this was interesting. Cutthroat Island still goes down, which had… What he was that guy’s name? I can’t remember his name. (interruption) Yeah, had Geena Davis. Correct.

Cutthroat Island is the only movie still to this day in history that has the special distinction of causing the actual shutdown of the entire studio. Like, it was so bad that not only did it bomb, but it put a big hole in the middle of the ship and the whole pirate ship went down with it. The whole studio that made that movie was gone afterwards. Wow. There’s a lot on this list.

I’m trying to think of some of the ones that I’ve seen or that are… It is incredible how many movies they’ve made that have lost a hundred million dollars. It does give you a sense… (interruption) Ishtar. Now, that’s kicking it old school, but some of you remember, this is 1987, and it lost, adjusted for inflation, $100 million. “An adventure comedy produced by Warren Beatty,” costarred Dustin Hoffman, “a tale of two untalented songwriters who travel to a booking in Morocco.”

One of the worst movies of all time in terms of loss. Wow. Some amazing ones on here. So, anyway, this goes right at the top, though. This is among the biggest losses of all time. Moral of the story, my friends: Wokeness. It doesn’t pay. It really doesn’t. Just give it time. On a long enough timeline, the wokeness will get you.