This just in: The STW Daily News Round-Up featuring all the news that’s fit to (digitally) print for Tuesday, August 9, 2022. Ezra Miller charged with burglary and Warner Bros Discovery’s David Zaslav refuses to back down from the company’s HBO Max and DCU content strategy.
HBO Max’s David Zaslav faces more resistance after Ezra Miller charged with burglary
Whew. It’s been a rough couple of weeks for the folks over at HBO Max. After facing significant pushback for scrapping Batgirl and roughly $300 million in new content, David Zaslav seemed to rebound rather swiftly last week, confidently projecting a solid outlook for Warner Bros Discovery on last week’s quarterly earnings call.
“We’re not going to launch a movie until it’s ready,” Zaslav said on Thursday’s call. “We’re not going to launch a movie to make a quarter, and we’re not going to put a movie out unless we believe in it.”
His statement, which was indirectly aimed at Batgirl, led to more backlash on Twitter, including Kevin Smith who condemned the move in a rare display of contention with a major studio executive.
“It’s an incredibly bad look to cancel the Latina ‘Batgirl’ movie,” Smith said. “I don’t give a shit if the movie was absolute fucking dog shit – I guarantee you that it wasn’t. The two directors [Bilall Fallah and Adil El Arbi] who directed that movie did a couple of episodes of ‘Ms. Marvel,’ and it was a wonderful fucking show, and they had more money to do ‘Batgirl’ than they had to do an episode of ‘Ms. Marvel’ and stuff.”
Smith denounced the decision to move forward with The Flash and not Batgirl, despite Ezra Miller’s ongoing legal issues.
“I don’t give a shit how bad the ‘Batgirl’ movie is; nobody in that movie is complicated or has anything in their real life you have to market around,” Smith added, “In ‘The Flash’ movie, we all know there’s a big problem! Flash is the Reverse-Flash in real life.”
Despite the pushback, Zaslav has yet to pivot, and insiders who’ve seen early versions of the film have said that Batgirl is irredeemable – but fans are still holding out hope that Ezra Miller’s newest legal troubles could force WB to change course.
Ezra Miller charged with burglary
Late Monday, it was reported that Ezra Miller had been arrested for felony burglary by Vermont police, adding more gas to the Warner Bros Discovery/Flash/Batgirl fire.
According to News 10 (Albany), a burglary was reported on May 1 at a residence on County Road in Stamford, Vermont. Local police stated that several bottles had been stolen while the homeowners were away and that, after reviewing surveillance videos and speaking to several witnesses, they decided there was enough evidence to charge Miller with a crime.
This comes after several months of troubling reports about Ezra’s behavior, with some news agencies publishing claims that he ran a cult-like estate and groomed minors.
Despite all of the alleged outlandish behavior, Warner Bros Discovery has given no indication that The Flash will be pulled.
Unfortunately for some fans, that also means that WB giving wings back to Batgirl is unlikely. If the film is as bad as some have claimed, Zaslav is more likely to pull the plug on The Flash in addition to Batgirl before green-lighting a film he says doesn’t meet the company’s thresholds for quality.
It will be interesting to see how it all plays out, but for the moment, fans may have to just trust Zaslav. And with recent reports showing HBO Max as the clear leader among streamers in multiple categories, it’s obvious that Zaslav has plenty of wiggle room with investors. Regardless of how the Twitter-sphere or Kevin Smith feels about his decisions, the shareholders don’t appear to be in any rush to question his process for now.