Cast your mind back to the summer of 2017, when Wonder Woman ruled over the box office and comic book fans were looking toward Justice League with a sense of cautious optimism.
Indeed, thanks to the meteoric success of Patty Jenkins’ solo movie, Warner Bros. had reportedly doubled down on the Immortal Warrior in the hope of courting the female audience en masse. But it would appear the fallout from Hollywood’s ongoing sexual harassment saga, one prompted by the accusations initially made against Harvey Weinstein, had a knock-on effect on Justice League.
At least, that’s according to an exhaustive ResetEra post uncovered by ‘MrMak1080,’ which deems Justice League to be a “lightning rod for tragedy, controversy and overall PR problems.” Uploaded to the ‘DCEUleaks’ subreddit, the following report begins by outlining Warner’s “modest” box office projections, before deep diving into what went wrong.
But then everything changed when, to go along with the all reshoot stories which WB just couldn’t shake, Harvey-Gate broke and with it Affleck was swept up in it and then that swept up Ratner (whom Gadot had been friends with and pictured at his house having dinner parties) and then there was more Affleck scandal as to whether he knew about this stuff or not and suddenly the main female audience were being turned off this film.
The allegations continued:
While this was all good for the industry with people like Harvey and Ratner being exposed Justice League was constantly in the orbit of these stories. Just to clarify Ratner never had any involvement in the WB slate beyond passive investment. The studio even used to hammer that point home to directors and producers when they came to pitch!
As if to hammer the point home when the film finally did have its premiere, neither of the two directors who worked on the film (Snyder and Whedon) made themselves available to speak owing to previous family related issues, and then arguably the two biggest stars, Gadot and Affleck, had to miss the red carpet too just in case they are asked any awkward questions. This is unheard of for a film of this size.
Like all posts uploaded to ResetEra, we’d advise taking this one with a grain of salt. After all, this user alleges that Zack Snyder was “instrumental” in the production and development of Wonder Woman, which we know to be untrue – Snyder merely suggested that Diana Prince’s cinematic debut be kept in the confines of an origins story, before handing over full creative control to Patty Jenkins and DC veteran Geoff Johns.
What we do know, however, is that Justice League‘s failure has prompted a major restructuring effort at Warner Bros. Pictures, which is now planning to shake things up at the top end of DC Films. It’s an overhaul that will purportedly take place in January, by which point we may already know the identity of Matt Reeves’ new Batman.
Published: Dec 8, 2017 08:55 am