Nicolas Winding Refn came to Cannes 2026 with a new film and an old obsession. The Danish director of Drive told Deadline at the festival that he would still love to make a Batgirl movie for DC Studios. His next four years are already mapped out, and that superhero dream has not entirely left his system.

What Refn Said and Why He Picked Batgirl

The “Drive” filmmaker was clear about one thing straight away. Wonder Woman was off the table. “Wonder Woman is done, that one I thought was super heavy,” he told Deadline at Cannes. Batgirl sits in a different space for him entirely. His pull toward the character runs deep, rooted in aesthetics and a lifelong obsession with the visual culture of comic books. “The costumes, I love the aesthetics. A lot of Her Private Hell is my obsession with dolls, objects and how to move people around in space and time. I loved the objectification of objects, and superheroes and comic-books and that whole sub-culture.” What draws Refn to the superhero world:

• A lifelong love of comic book culture and visual aesthetics
• His personal collection of Japanese toys and Legos
• An obsession with costumes, objects, and the way bodies occupy screen space
• A desire to make something superhero-driven entirely on his own instinctive terms

He did add a notable caveat, however. “I don’t know if I’ll make an actual IP,” he said. He has always been someone who prefers building his own worlds over working inside someone else’s existing franchise.

Nicolas Winding Refn Batgirl DC Studios Cannes 2026 interview

A Dream That Has Been Alive Since 2016

This is not a fresh idea for Refn by any measure. Back in 2016, while promoting The Neon Demon at Cannes, he was openly campaigning for the character. “You know the one I want to do? I want to make Batgirl. Let’s get Warner working on it,” he said plainly at the time. Before Batgirl became his preferred answer, he had his eyes on Wonder Woman. He had even named his Drive co-star Christina Hendricks as his ideal choice for the lead. That vision never went anywhere, and Patty Jenkins turned Wonder Woman into a billion-dollar franchise with Gal Gadot. Years later, when The Hollywood Reporter revisited the idea with him, the door was still wide open. “Sure, I’ll make Batwoman, or Batgirl, whatever it’s called, if it came my way,” he said. The alignment between Refn’s filmmaking style and the Batgirl character is honestly not that hard to see. His films are consistently built around isolated, powerful women navigating violent and predatory worlds. A Refn version of Barbara Gordon would never play it safe, but it would almost certainly be unlike anything DC has produced before.

The Batgirl Movie That Hollywood Buried

**The last time someone tried to bring Batgirl to screen, it ended in one of Hollywood’s most shocking and controversial decisions in modern memory.** Directed by Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah and starring Leslie Grace as Barbara Gordon, the film had a budget that grew from $75 million to roughly $90 million due to COVID-related delays. Michael Keaton was set to return as Batman, alongside J.K. Simmons and Brendan Fraser in key supporting roles. In August 2022, Warner Bros. Discovery under CEO David Zaslav shelved the nearly completed film and took a tax write-off on the entire production. The decision meant the movie could not be released theatrically, on streaming, or sold to any other studio ever.

• Directors: Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah
• Lead actress: Leslie Grace as Barbara Gordon
• Budget: Approximately $90 million
• Notable cast: Michael Keaton, J.K. Simmons, Brendan Fraser
• Final status: Permanently shelved as a tax write-off in August 2022

Leslie Grace found out the film was dead from a press report, not from the studio. “I found out like the rest of you,” she told Variety. It remains one of the most jaw-dropping moments in modern Hollywood history. Now, DC Studios chiefs James Gunn and Peter Safran are rebuilding the entire DC universe from scratch. Their Batman reboot, The Brave and the Bold, centers on Bruce Wayne training his son Damian as Robin. Where Barbara Gordon fits in that new timeline remains an open question, and the chances of Gunn welcoming Refn into the new DCU fold appear very slim at this stage.

Dead for 20 Minutes and Back With a New Vision

The Batgirl comment may grab the most headlines, but the deeper story at Cannes this week is the man telling it. Three years ago in 2023, Refn suffered a severe heart valve failure and was clinically dead before doctors revived him using electric shock. “Three years ago, I died, and I was dead for 20 minutes. When you’re told that you’re maybe going to die within two weeks, a lot of things go through your mind: You’re afraid, angry, frustrated, sad, you lash out.” Coming back from that edge rewired how he thinks about filmmaking. “When I did come back alive, thank god, I was like, I had to start all over again with everything, but this time, I had 30 years of knowledge,” he told Deadline. He returned to features armed with one firm creative rule: make only what comes to him instinctively, and nothing else.

Her Private Hell Lands at Cannes and Opens in July

Her Private Hell, Refn’s first feature film since The Neon Demon a full decade ago, premiered out of competition at the 79th Cannes Film Festival on May 18, 2026. The film received a lengthy standing ovation inside the Grand Theatre Lumiere, with lead actress Sophie Thatcher visibly moved to tears as the credits rolled. Principal photography took place across Copenhagen and Tokyo in the summer of 2025. Refn built the film’s futuristic metropolis entirely on constructed sets in Copenhagen after realizing that the city he imagined simply did not exist anywhere else in the real world. The film, co-written with Esti Giordani, follows a troubled young woman searching for her missing father after a strange mist swallows a futuristic city and unleashes a deadly presence. A separate storyline involves a group of actresses at a hotel preparing to shoot a Barbarella-style science fiction film, while a serial killer known as the Leather Man stalks the city’s women. Her Private Hell cast:

• Sophie Thatcher as Elle
• Charles Melton as Private K
• Havana Rose Liu as Dominique
• Kristine Froseth as Hunter
• Dougray Scott as Johnny Thunders
• Diego Calva as Nico
• Shioli Kutsuna, Aoi Yamada, and Hidetoshi Nishijima in supporting roles

**NEON is releasing Her Private Hell in US theaters on July 24, 2026, across 800 to 1,200 screens.** MUBI holds the release rights across the UK, Ireland, Italy, Spain, and Latin America. Whether Gunn and Safran ever pick up the phone and call Refn remains a long shot. But the man who was brought back from death, rebuilt his creative instincts from the ground up, and just returned to Cannes with his most personal film yet is not someone who stops dreaming easily. Batgirl has been cursed before, but with a filmmaker this singular expressing this much genuine love for the character, the dream feels just alive enough to be exciting. What do you think: would Nicolas Winding Refn be the bold, unexpected choice DC Studios needs to finally get Batgirl right? Drop your thoughts in the comments and let us know.