Banned Movies, from ‘Batgirl’ to ‘The Day the Clown Cried’

While most film industry observers expected the merger between WarnerMedia and Discovery to result in some big changes, few predicted that the already-shot “Batgirl” movie would never see the light of day. With movie studios trying to squeeze as many movies as possible out of whatever comic book IP they control, the idea of scrapping a DC movie that featured Michael Keaton returning as Batman was unthinkable to many.

But while it’s true that such a high profile film being scratched in favor of a tax write-off is a new phenomenon in Hollywood, “Batgirl” is far from the first completed movie that will never see the light of day. For as long as people have been making movies, people have been preventing them from being released. Hollywood history is littered with controversial films that ultimately weren’t released for a variety of reasons.

Cinephiles with an interest in strange historical tidbits have been keeping tabs on scrapped movies for years, so IndieWire has rounded up a list of the most interesting ones. Sometimes the films are pulled by studios or backers, but sometimes the artists themselves decide they’d rather the public never see their work. Sometimes the reasoning is questionable, but sometimes everyone can agree that the films shouldn’t be shown.  Regardless, for the foreseeable future, these eight films are off limits to American viewers.

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