Imagine working months, a year plus, on a project. Planning and outlining a story. Script revisions and rewrites. Storyboarding. A music score with full orchestra. Fighting and stunt choreography. Filming ninety percent of the movie.

Only to have HBO Max (I refuse to call it Max) shelve it for a tax write off.

This happened last year to Batgirl. Yes I’m still mad about this.

The movie starred Leslie Grace as Barbara Gordon/Batgirl, Brendan Fraser as Firefly and J.K. Simmons as Commissioner Gordon. Michael Keaton was reprising his role as Batman. And it looked awesome.

Filming began November 30, 2021. In January 2023, DC Studios Co-head Peter Safran deemed the film “not releasable.”

But, the real reasoning may just be because The Artist Formerly Known as HBO Max was rebranding, and no longer wanted the direct-to-streaming movie in its library. And it would make a fantastic tax write off.

I was going to write about this a long time ago. I mulled it over, got mad about it, and decided too much time had passed and I didn’t want to bring it up again.

But then we have Disney+ cancelling The Spiderwick Chronicles series adaptation this week. This is only one cancelation of many, as Disney+ and Hulu downsize for their fiscal third quarter.

This year, Disney+ deleted Crater, a $54 million feature that only lasted on the streamer for seven weeks! They also removed the Willow spinoff, Y: the Last Man, and The World According to Jeff Goldblum. Last year, HBO Max removed the likes of The Witches (2020), Moonshot, Locked Down, Superintelligence, Charm City Kings, An American Pickle and a veritable pile of animated and live action series.

And since my blog lately has become “here’s a bunch of thoughts about the writer and actor’s strikes” you can only imagine how much Disney and Hulu and all these other streamers are saving on their barely existent residuals.

The Not So Fantastic 4

All this insanity reminds me of The Fantastic Four movie.

No, not that one.

Certainly not that one.

Yep, that one.

Not familiar with it? I’m not surprised. It’s technically a movie you can’t watch (unless cough cough bootleg DVD at Comic-Con cough cough).

The story behind this Fantastic Four is interesting, because it was a movie made specifically to never be seen. Why?

The 1994 film was made just to retain the rights to the characters. Although this Looper article claims otherwise.

A paltry $1 million dollar budget was set. A music video director was hired to direct the film. Cast and crew were hired at breakneck speed. This was definitely a race against the clock. Principal photography ended just three days before the contract would expire. The movie was edited in 28 days, and soon after it was served with a cease and desist from the producers.

Producer Berd Eichinger claimed it wasn’t his intention not to release the film, but Marvel exec Avi Arad was the one who stopped the movie in its tracks. In fact, Arad did buy the movie for several million dollars and order the prints destroyed. But still, it persisted, and bootleg versions exist out there for people to see the film in all its awkward B movie glory.

Pay or Play

Some movie contracts have a Pay or Play clause.

a pay or play clause guarantees that someone will get paid, even if they end up not doing the job that they were contracted to get paid for in the first place. They either get paid or they “play” and get paid. 

-Wrapbook

A good example was when the American The X Factor initially hired Cheryl Cole to judge two seasons of the show. Problem was, they didn’t think American audiences would understand her accent, so she was let go after the pilot episode. Cheryl Cole eventually had to sue, after she was paid for only one season. Her contract guaranteed her two seasons of pay, even though she didn’t work out as a judge.

This clause is also how Johnny Depp got paid $16 million after being fired from Fantastic Beasts 3 and replaced by Hannibal‘s Mads Mikkelsen. He had a pay or play, and the contract, as the IndieWire article points out, “did not have a morality clause.” This was after the highly publicized U.K. libel trial regarding the story of abuse with his wife Amber Heard. Mikkelsen was a better villain anyway. But still, $16 million is a lot to lose to an actor not appearing on screen.

I personally have worked on movies that have never, and will never, be seen. These are typically due to issues with finances at the indie budget level. I’ve worked on pilots that were never picked up by a network. I know several people who worked on The CW’s live action Powerpuff Girls show. I can’t imagine working on something so huge that it cost $50-80 million — and it never gets to be seen.

The cancelation of Powerpuff, from what I heard, might have been an act of mercy.

Pay or Stream?

We’ve got to a sticky situation in which titles are being deleted off of servers and shows and movies cease to exist. Actors, writers and show creators can’t earn residuals off that creative work, and not even DVD sales can save the day because…well, there’s not a lot of DVD sales going on. Personally, I’d love to see some streaming shows hit the DVD market. I don’t want Apple TV but I do want to see Silo. Why should I have Peacock in order to watch the Twisted Metal adaptation? Frankly, it would be beneficial to have an on-demand physical or digital download of content like this.

That’s enough for now.

Release Batgirl you cowards!

…and don’t get me started on New Warriors.

Sources

Disney Plus movie deleted just seven weeks after it premiered

Disney+ Not Moving Ahead With Completed ‘Spiderwick Chronicles’ Series Adaptation

HBO Max removes even more original content

Producer’s Guide: Pay or Play Clauses

Johnny Depp Exposé Reveals His Destructive Set Habits and $16M ‘Fantastic Beasts 3’ Payday