“Batgirl” star Brendan Fraser says the scrapped Warner Bros. film was “great” but was not given a proper chance to fly.
The 54-year-old Oscar-nominated actor said the project was locked away “in a vault somewhere” after studio executives deemed it “irredeemable” back in August, according to an interview on “The Howard Stern Show.”
Fraser portrayed the villain Firefly in the DC movie, a role he said he “relished” and was “great fun.”
“It was a story about a guy who had been in the service and his benefits were cut, he was very angry with the system — and what else is he gonna do but burn It to the ground? That’s all you need to know,” Fraser said of his character’s storyline.
While he said he’s never seen the finished movie, Fraser claimed that some of his friends and co-workers had and told him that it was “really good.”
But he also explained that an incomplete director’s cut of the film was shown at a screen test, and it would later be labeled a failure.
“I don’t know about you but I don’t eat half-baked cake,” Fraser said to Stern about the unfinished product. “I don’t wanna see something that’s not ready yet, and the sad thing is that I don’t know if it was judged on the merit — it wasn’t shown in the best light that it could have had been.
“I mean, yes, once you give a film to the people in the world, it’s open season to criticize it or praise it or whatever you want. But this didn’t even really get a fair shake,” he continued.
Fraser also described Batgirl herself, the film’s star Leslie Grace, as “a firecracker” and “a dynamo.”
“And that’s, you know, that’s disappointing for obvious reasons but moreover because little girls are going to have to wait longer now before they can see a Batgirl who they can identify that says, ‘Hey, she looks just like me, too,’ in Leslie Grace.”
The 28-year-old actress previously gushed about working with Fraser, too, saying he was “outstanding” as Firefly.
“I felt so blessed to have him as my sparring partner,” Grace told Collider last month. “We had so many amazing action scenes together where we were beating each other up, but hugging in between takes because he’s just so sweet.
“I would’ve loved people to see those moments, but you know what? You have the experience, and you keep on rolling, and I feel so blessed, all in all, that I have those memories,” she added.
Elsewhere in Fraser and Stern’s conversation, the actor revealed that he and Matt Damon were buck naked while filming an infamous shower scene in their 1992 movie “School Ties.”
