There has been a lot of buzz lately about Nia DaCosta and her involvement with the movie ‘The Marvels’. Disney’s response to the middling response of the movie has created a situation where the Hollywood giant has taken an unprecedented stance of throwing its director under the bus. The Marvels is likely going to end up one of Marvel Studios’ worst-performing films in a considerable period of time, and the weirdly public way Disney has decided to paint director Nia DaCosta in the wake of its release is not ideal.
It all started earlier this month when a damning report from Variety about the struggles the MCU was facing included a bizarre aside that saw an undisclosed source take a shot at DaCosta for concluding production on the movie remotely, as she moved to London to set up her delayed follow-up project, Hedda with Tessa Thompson. This sparked a wave of criticism of the framing of this information, itself a pretty standard practice for directors balancing multiple projects at once. Even DaCosta herself had to address the allegation that her move “raised eyebrows” at Marvel during The Marvels’ press tour, citing that it was Marvel’s repeated shuffling of their own movie that eventually forced her hand.
Disney continued to air grievances through Hollywood media after The Marvels came out. A few weeks later, The Hollywood Reporter published a piece salaciously framed as accusing DaCosta of having “bailed out” on a cast-and-crew screening of The Marvels, only to reveal in its own reporting that DaCosta had not only not been invited to the screening, but her absence from it was because she was celebrating her birthday on the same day. This sparked a round of criticism, and a response from DaCosta’s representatives, who told THR “it would be quite disrespectful and upsetting to suggest Nia has anything other than adoration for her creative team,” as mentioned in the same talking point.
It is not uncommon for studios to try and air grievances through Hollywood media, but the specific situation around DaCosta was coalescing in a weird way. These weren’t allegations of a poor job on DaCosta’s part as a director or any kind of professional impropriety, but scandalous framings of pretty run-of-the-mill scheduling conflicts. However, Disney has taken an even more unprecedented step into the light to frame DaCosta for The Marvels’ failings. While not directly blaming DaCosta, CEO Bob Iger did offer what he believed was the reason for the film’s underperformance: that there were simply not enough cooks in the kitchen.
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