Well, at least Michael Keaton got paid for the shelved Batgirl movie

In a 2022 Deadline interview, director Bilall Fallah called Warner Bros.’ unprecedented cancellation of his fully-completed Batgirl film a “traumatic experience,” adding that he felt “really bad” for all the actors, writers, and crew members whose work would never see the light of day. His sympathy seems to be somewhat wasted on Michael Keaton, however, who was set to revive his iconic caped crusader for the shelved film. 

“No, I didn’t care one way or another. Big, fun, nice check,” Keaton said in a recent interview with GQ when asked if he was disappointed by Batgirl’s fate. (In a gesture that feels more suited to The Penguin than Bruce Wayne, the outlet notes that he apparently also “rubb[ed] his fingers together in the universal gesture for ‘moolah.’” Uhh…)

At least he hasn’t gone total DC villain. “I like those boys. They’re nice guys,” he added, speaking of Batgirl co-directors Fallah and Adil El Arbi. “I pull for them. I want them to succeed, and I think they felt very badly, and that made me feel bad.” But for Keaton himself? “I’m good,” he said.

To be fair, it would be impossible to care about every single project equally when you’ve acted in as many as Keaton has. He’s not the first actor to express ambivalence towards his previous, superheroic work, and he won’t be the last. (Besides, he got to put on the mask again for 2023’s The Flash.) Not everything can be Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, which will see Keaton re-don a very different, but no less iconic suit this September. That one, at least, Keaton seems excited about. “​​Tim [Burton] deserves enormous credit. He changed everything,” he told GQ. “I can’t necessarily say this, but there’s a strong possibility there is no Marvel Universe, there is no DC Universe, without Tim Burton.”

Keaton’s Batgirl coldness could also just be an unintended side-effect of a business philosophy the actor expressed in the same conversation. “I never panic,” he said. “If you get desperate, you’re fucked. Don’t ever get desperate. You can get insecure and nervous, and go, ‘Wow, boy, I’m not doing so great right now.’ But when you get desperate, you’re dead.”