Last week, Variety dropped a warts-and-all report on the inner struggles at Marvel as the studio seems to have lost its shine following the completion of “The Infinity Saga” with the smash box-office hit Avengers: Endgame. While Marvel has found some success on Disney+ and delivered a small handful of successful blockbusters, the MCU hasn’t been the pop culture juggernaut it used to be.
Adding to that narrative is this week’s release of The Marvels, a sequel to Captain Marvel, which has been tracking below average for the MCU. According to Variety, the film has been plagued by extensive reshoots and a director, Nia DaCosta, who left to work on another film during a post-production:
Then eyebrows were raised again when DaCosta began working on another film while “The Marvels” was still in postproduction — the filmmaker moved to London earlier this year to begin prepping for her Tessa Thompson drama “Hedda.” (A representative for DaCosta declined to comment.)
“If you’re directing a $250 million movie, it’s kind of weird for the director to leave with a few months to go,” says a source familiar with the production.
However, in a new interview with Jake’s Takes, DaCosta has set the record straight on what really happened. Most notably, she made it clear that she was very involved in The Marvels post-production, which she worked on remotely.
“I think there’s just a lot of energy and criticism around Marvel anyway, so I’m not surprised,” DaCosta said about the Variety report making headlines. “But for me personally, it was literally just that they moved the date of the film four different times. And so, instead of it being a two year process, which I was deeply committed to, it became a three-and-a-half year process.”
According to DaCosta, Marvel was well aware that she had another film coming up, and everything was worked out before she took off for London.
“We figured out a way to do it remote, we figured out the best process,” she said via The A.V. Club. “And actually at the time that I left to go to London to start prep on my next film, everyone was so clear about what the film was, what we wanted, everyone knew what I wanted. So it really wasn’t the dramatic sort of thing that I think people are feeling like it is.”
The Marvels opens in theaters on November 10.
(Via The A.V. Club)
