To the surprise of absolutely no one, Millennium Films is putting their planned Red Sonja movie on hold. The choice to hire Bryan Singer despite years of allegations of sexual harassment and sexual assault (some of it involving minors) was questionable enough in the run-up to Bohemian Rhapsody's release. Never mind that he got fired from that Freddie Mercury biopic, with Dexter Fletcher taking over sans official directing credit to finish the movie. Singer was set to receive an alleged $10 million payday despite his alleged on-set unprofessionalism and despite his alleged off-set behavior. But with last month’s The Atlantic article blowing the (public) lid on these now public allegations (along with a few new ones), there was no practical reason for Avi Lerner and friends to dig in.
The choice to hire Singer in the first place was vexing to folks understandably frustrated at the legions of white male filmmakers given major franchises under nearly every circumstance (coming off a flop, coming off a festival darling, coming off would-be on-set scandal) while female directors and minority directors were left chomping at the proverbial bit even for projects for and about women and minorities. A year or so after the downfall of Harvey Weinstein was supposed to usher in a new era of gender parity (or at least punitive career losses for inappropriate workplace behavior), we’ve seen the likes of John Lasseter, Louie C.K., Max Lands and Les Moonves making an effort to notch artistic comebacks with little real blowback aside from online outrage.
If Lerner really was intent on hiring Singer and paying him a lot of money at least partially as an “Up yours!” to the #TimesUp or #MeToo movements, well, it wasn’t my $80 million at stake. But no man is an island, and I have to imagine that investors and other interested parties have noticed that the PR nightmare from hiring Bryan Singer to helm a Red Sonja movie (which features a heroine who is a rape victim) just wasn’t worth it. Before Bohemian Rhapsody, Singer hadn’t had a real blow-out hit outside of his X-Men movies. It’s not like “from the director of Apt Pupil, Superman Returns and Jack the Giant Slayer” was going to appeal to foreign pre-sale folks.
But then Bohemian Rhapsody earned $210 million domestic and $844m-plus worldwide and ended up in the Oscar race. It also joined A Star Is Born ($208m domestic and $420m worldwide) and (relatively speaking) Universal/Comcast's Green Book ($61m domestic and counting) and Fox's The Favourite ($69m worldwide) as the only Oscar season contenders to actually qualify as hits. Still, Lerner’s comment arguing that Bohemian Rhapsody’s $800m-plus gross was proof of Singer’s talent and marquee value was ludicrous. People showed up to Bohemian Rhapsody either ignorant/indifferent as to who directed it or purely to see a splashy Freddie Mercury biopic. Arguing that people saw Bohemian Rhapsody for Singer is like arguing that folks showed up to Walt Disney's Mary Poppins Returns because it was a Rob Marshall movie.
Even if you argue that the film’s crowd-pleasing qualities are part of why it legged out, Singer himself didn’t actually finish his own movie. Moreover, from a marketing standpoint, bringing in a name like Bryan Singer does little more than poison the media and the respective geek fandoms right from the get-go. Even if you argue that overseas audiences won’t care who directs it, this is not an adult-skewing biopic that will sink or swim on general audiences. A Red Sonja movie is likely to be most anticipated by the very demographics most likely to be appalled by Singer’s alleged history and the gender imbalances at play. Hiring any dude director for Red Sonja would have been a missed opportunity. Hiring this specific dude is an unforced error.
If I may state the obvious, there are plenty of female filmmakers who could handle a big-budget Red Sonja flick, and not just the obvious candidates like Kathryn Bigelow, Patty Jenkins, Catherine Hardwicke, Michelle McLaren, Mimi Leder and Lexi Alexander. There are any number of woman directors coming off small-scale hits (Thea Sharrock, Debra Granik, Jennifer Kent, etc.) who deserve at least as much of an opportunity as what Singer got after Usual Suspects and Apt Pupil 20 years ago. Even if none of those folks have an interest, the gender inequity won’t end (or even budge) unless producers take a moment to find a female director who does want to make a new Red Sonja movie, even if it’s just for the credits and money.
Even if it doesn’t "matter" if a movie like Red Sonja ends up directed by a dude, hiring a female filmmaker for a project immediately gets the online press (who, right up until the release, can control the narrative) on your side until footage proves otherwise. A Red Sonja film helmed by Jane Goodman or Rachel Talalay is going to be greeted with far more enthusiasm online than one helmed by a relatively unknown male director, let alone one mired in scandal. The narrative became not “Let’s hope it’s better than the Brigitte Nielson/Arnold Schwarzenegger flick!” but rather “This troubled filmmaker who got fired from his last movie is getting more opportunities than unblemished and capable female directors.” Singer’s involvement was guaranteed to be the totality of the pre-release Red Sonja story.
We will see what comes of this delay, but it was inevitable at least after the Atlantic story broke. With Singer attached, it would have been that much harder to attract top talent in front of the camera for a project that isn’t a remotely sure thing. American moviegoers have a history of ignoring female-led action flicks (Atomic Blonde, The Ghost in the Shell, Widows, Red Sparrow, Underworld: Blood Wars, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, Tomb Raider, etc.) and then asking “Where are the women?” And, yes, a movie like Red Sonja was arguably always going to live or die by overseas interest (including, yes, China) where many of those female-led actioners thrived.
But there was still no financial incentive to get your project off to such a problematic point with domestic fans even if it was merely to “own the libs.” A movie like Red Sonja is perfectly capable of bombing in North America without a directorial pick that has the domestic press actively rooting for it to fail overeas as well.
