Yesterday, I had written about how “The Marvels” was tracking lower than expected for its opening weekend, which is next Friday. A $50 million opening seems to be the number going around internal tracking circles.
Variety is now reporting that “The Marvels” received “middling reviews” at a secret test-screening earlier this year. MCU movies tend to not be tested, but it seems as though they made a very rare exception for Nia DaCosta’s troubled movie.
The report adds that, while it was still in post-production, DaCosta disappeared — it turns out that she had already started to work on her next film, “Hedda.” A source tells Variety, “If you’re directing a $250M movie, it’s kind of weird for the director to leave with a few months to go”
If you remember, DaCosta had previously mentioned that she didn’t really have full directorial control on “The Marvels.” She added that “The Marvels” was very much “a Kevin Feige production, it’s his movie. So I think you live in that reality, but I tried to go in with the knowledge that some of you is going to take a back seat.”
It gets worse. The Variety piece adds that “The Marvels” was also “plagued with lengthy reshoots”. The aim was to bring some kind of “coherence” to the story, which is supposed to connect characters from two Disney+ shows (“WandaVision” and “Ms. Marvel”).
However, instead of seamlessly building on the success of “Captain Marvel,” this move resulted in four weeks of reshoots to “bring coherence to a tangled storyline”. Yikes.
“The Marvels” cost $273 million to make, but some are saying that number might turn out to be much higher since the data is based on financial reports from the end of September 2022 and does not include post-production work.
I’m supposed to catch “The Marvels” next Wednesday. It will be released in theaters on Friday, November 10th.