Warner Bros. Discovery CEO defends canceling 'Batgirl': 'Our job is to protect the DC brand'

• Warner Bros. Discovery canceled the release of the "Batgirl" movie this week.

• CEO David Zaslav defended the decision during the company's investor call on Thursday.

• "Our job is to protect the DC brand and that's what we're going to do," he said.

Warner Bros. Discovery, DC's new parent company, has made it a priority to get its superhero movie universe on the right track. One casualty of that has been the "Batgirl" movie.

The company said this week it had canceled the release of the nearly completed film, which had wrapped production earlier this year and was intended for HBO Max.

CEO David Zaslav defended the decision during Warner Bros. Discovery's Q2 earnings call on Thursday, its first as a company since WarnerMedia and Discovery completed their merger in April.

"The objective is to grow the DC brand, to grow the DC characters," he said. "But also, our job is to protect the DC brand, and that's what we're going to do."

Zaslav touted the company's commitment to movie theaters, saying a theatrical release "creates word-of-mouth buzz" for a movie's eventual streaming debut. With "Batgirl" developed as a straight-to-streaming movie, it was put under heightened scrutiny.