Directed by Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah from a screenplay by Christina Hodson, the film starred Leslie Grace as Batgirl alongside J. K. Simmons, Jacob Scipio, Brendan Fraser, Michael Keaton, and Ivory Aquino.

Development of a Batgirl feature film began in March 2017 with Joss Whedon attached to write and direct, but he left the project a year later.

[12] In May 2016, the DC Comics character Barbara Gordon / Batgirl had the potential to appear in a female superhero team-up film starring Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn,[13] which became Birds of Prey (2020).

[22] Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, who were both longtime fans of the character,[23] were hired to direct the film a month later, when it was confirmed to be planned as an HBO Max original.

[3] Jacob Scipio and Brendan Fraser joined the cast later in October,[5][7] respectively as the mob boss Anthony Bressi,[6] and as the villain Firefly.

[8] The villain role was originally offered to Sylvester Stallone, who voiced King Shark in the DCEU film The Suicide Squad (2021), but "things just didn't work out".

[29][30] Also in October, El Arbi and Fallah said the character Batman would appear in the film but declined to confirm if Ben Affleck would reprise his role from previous DCEU projects.

[35] El Arbi and Fallah had arrived in Glasgow on August 24 to prepare for filming, and scouted locations with production designer Christopher Glass.

[53] Rolling Stone said that WBD determined that spending an additional $7–9 million during post-production in an effort to bring Batgirl to the level of other theatrical DC films, such as Shazam!

[49][41][50] Deadline noted that test screenings showed temporary versions of the visual effects, "which tend to temper audience enthusiasm".

He explained that WBD was focused on moving forward from WarnerMedia's plans that they disagreed with through course corrections, such as the cutbacks, and said they would still make significant investments in its intellectual properties, but that these would be different from what that company had previously done.

[60] Hamada was not consulted regarding the decision and only learned about it when Warner Bros. Pictures Group co-chairpersons and CEOs Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy informed him at a test screening for Black Adam (2022).

[62] Film industry figures, including Keaton, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige, and directors Edgar Wright and James Gunn, reached out to El Arbi and Fallah to express support.

[57] Following the announcement of the cancellation, El Arbi and Fallah attempted to log into the Warner Bros. servers to capture some of the footage on their cellphones, but they were unable to.

[65] In April, four United States lawmakers penned a letter to the United States Department of Justice asking it to reconsider the WBD merger and investigate its use of cost-cutting measures, which they alleged had "adopt[ed] potentially anticompetitive practices that reduce[d] consumer choice and harm[ed] workers in affected labor markets" and thus "hollow[ed] out an iconic American studio", citing its layoffs and consolidation since the prior year as well as the shelving of nearly-completed projects for tax write-offs, such as Batgirl and the "consumer outcry" over its cancellation.

[56] In January 2023, El Arbi and Fallah said they were open to working with Gunn and Safran at DC Studios in the future, even if it was for a different project unrelated to Batgirl.