Secret ‘Batgirl’ sessions coming to Warner Bros. (Exclusive)

bat girl It won’t fly to HBO Max screens, but a select group of insiders are seeing the film this week during secret screenings at the Warner Bros. lot, say multiple sources. The Hollywood reporter. They are said to be aimed at the people who worked on the film, both the cast and crew, as well as the representatives and executives.

One source described them as “funeral displays” that were held before the film was sent to an uncertain afterlife, with footage kept in a vault, physical or digital.

August 2 bat girl became the most talked about movie in the world when news broke that the new CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, David Zaslav, decided to cancel the $90 million DC movie to pay taxes. (The CEO of the new combined company is seeking $3 billion in cost savings.)

bat girl It was in full post-production when Warner canceled the project, but it was still far from complete, with temporary visual effects and a soundtrack. The film had already held a test screening, the only time audiences saw the cut.

There’s a question floating around bat girl Will it be next? Justice League by Zack Snyder, an abandoned film that later sees the light of day. But bat girl It’s different for a number of reasons, sources say. Justice League There was no tax deduction for the study. It was released in theaters and there was no legal reason not to have an alternate version. If the studio released bat girlIt is against the rules that Warner Bros. allows Discovery to claim a tax deduction.

Additionally, filmmakers Adil El Arbi and Bilal Falla say they don’t have personal access to any of the footage, though sources say it’s possible that some players associated with the project have the footage on personal drives. Instead, when Snyder left Justice League In the spring of 2017, he walked out of the Warner parking lot with a laptop containing an approximately four-hour cut of the film that he would conclude after a years-long campaign of fans demanding to see his version of the film.

Generally, a studio does not receive a full write-off immediately on a project that loses money, but receives a certain percentage immediately and the remainder over several years. That’s because it’s unclear how much a project can earn (or lose) over its lifetime when it hits cable and other platforms.

Various sources have suggested that Warner may be taking the drastic step of destroying it. bat girl footage as a demonstration to the IRS that there will never be any revenue from the project and therefore an immediate full write-off must be allowed. Other sources dispute this idea, noting that there are other projects that still have blocked footage that will never see the light of day, like the first HBO project. Game of thrones derivative pilot White moon, an hour of television that not even author George RR Martin has seen. There is also the possibility that Warner will make a decision. bat girl It is worth the exemption and refund of the tax obligation of the State.

Leslie Grace played Barbara Gordon/Batgore in what was supposed to be one of several modest-budget DC projects made directly for HBO Max as part of former WarnerMedia CEO Jason Killarney’s move to the streaming service. Zaslav, who took over the reins of the combined company in April, reversed that strategy, leading Warner to focus primarily on film.

but bat girl While Murdered received the most attention, it wasn’t the only film to fall victim to Zaslav’s tax-cutting strategy.

Scooby! vacation spotAnother nearly finished movie that was canceled the same day. bat girlHe quietly had his own funeral on the Warner lot last week.

Ashley Cullins contributed to this story.