Fresh off Bohemian Rhapsody and new charges of sexual misconduct, director Bryan Singer has found himself ousted from the reboot of Red Sonja. The news comes a month after Millennium Films quietly removed the film from their production slate.
Now The Hollywood Reporter reports that Millennium Films CEO Avi Lerner finally had to dismiss him after no American distributor would offer to release the film with Singer attached to direct. Lerner had previously defended the decision to hire Singer despite a recent exposé in The Atlantic which leveled new charges of misconduct against him.
Related: Accused sexual predator Bryan Singer just got pounded with some very bad news
“I continue to be in development for Red Sonja and Bryan Singer continues to be attached. The over $800 million Bohemian Rhapsody has grossed, making it the highest grossing drama in film history, is a testament to [Singer’s] remarkable vision and acumen,” Lerner said earlier this year. “I know the difference between agenda driven fake news and reality, and I am very comfortable with this decision. In America, people are innocent until proven otherwise.”
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Not long after Lerner’s comments, Millennium Films announced the project was on hold, though Singer remained attached. Now it appears Lerner and Millennium have rethought their strategy, and Singer will have to wait for another opportunity to stage a comeback.
Though Bohemian Rhapsody was met with great box office success, parent company Fox fired the director during production due to a series of absences from filming and on-set conflicts with star Rami Malek. Singer has long been the subject of rumor, innuendo and accusations regarding sexual misconduct with minors.
Vince
“making it the highest grossing drama in film history, is a testament to [Singer’s] remarkable vision and acumen,”
How can you be considered part of a films success when the actors hated you and you got your ass fired from it? Does not compute. I think Lerner was initially just looking at the 800 million profit and nothing else mattered.
Doug
Easy. Because your reputation in Hollywood is all about how much money you make, and nothing else.
Bromancer7
He wasn’t fired till the very end of shooting, literally the last week. And as a director it’s not your job to have the crew and actors love you. It’s your job to make a movie.
Vince
Really? We’re not talking just a dislike. Singer was being an asshole to everyone.
The sick mother excuse was just an excuse. It had everything to do with the fact that the article was coming out and another kid was suing him and it was bugging the shit out of him.
DCguy
The article left out the fact that this mostly went down after Anthony Rapp said that he would call out anybody working on the film as supporting sexual assaulter Bryan Singer, and he called on all other people in Hollywood to do that too. Millenium put the film on hold within a day after he did that.
james7
Bohemian R was a really poor movie. People who loved it, just loved the QUEEN music. It must have really galled the folks from A STAR IS BORN (who did their own singing) to see an Oscar go to an actor who was lip singing Freddie Mercury records.
Greg
I thought the same thing about Bohemian Rhapsody. I liked the music, of course, but the story and movie was meh.
DHT
And when you read upon it, so much of it was fiction anyways.
gregg2010
Bohemian Rhapsody was a corny, predictable biopic ruined by the PG-13 rating. I couldn’t believe how conventional it was. And Mercury was anything but conventional. But it did contain a good performance by Malek.
mgconlan
I’m really getting tired of the neo-McCarthyism surrounding the “#MeToo” movement and how uncorroborated accusations are being used to wreck creative artists’ careers. If Bryan Singer has done illegal things to young men, he should be prosecuted for them. If not, he should be free to pursue his chosen craft. I received an e-mail asking me to sign a petition to call on Millennium Films to fire Singer from “Red Sonja” and refused to sign it because I think the dismissal of talent from films due to unproven allegations of sexual misconduct is as reprehensible as was the dismissal of talent from films in the 1940’s and 1950’s due to their Left-wing political activities. What Avi Lerner got worried about and forced him to change his mind about Singer was the negative publicity about him and the fear that people might refuse to pay money to see a film he was associated with because of the reports of misconduct — true or false — leveled against him.
redzebra1
They are not ‘uncorroborated’, check yourself.
DCguy
Please point out specific examples. Because Spacey Admitted it, Les Moonves Admitted it, Matt Lauer got caught, Harvey Weinstein is on tape.
So lets see, since there is all of that evidence, it sounds more like you just don’t like the idea that victims are speaking up. Bryan, is that you?
Polaro
Young men have been and continue to trade sex for access to people with influence and money. The fact that it often does not work out does not make the young men any less culpable for playing their game. That’s 90% of what I see in the Singer case. It is one of the reasons all men want to be successful – sex. There are accusations of actual rape, which are different, but its hard to see through all the pearl-clutching, naive nonsense about young men changing their minds after full well knowing what they were doing and why. These are not victims.
redzebra1
They were not ‘men’ at the time, and rape is a crime
DCguy
So child molesting is cool because all those kids were “asking for it”?