Disney Blaming ‘The Marvels’ Failure on Nia DaCosta

The damage-control campaign Bob Iger’s been on recently is quite something. He’s not even hiding his intentions to protect Disney, at any cost.

Iger, Disney’s CEO, is trying to explain the recent failures of his company. The latest report claims that, based on just their last four theatrical releases, Disney’s lost over $1 billion dollars. He has reason for panic and to scapegoat.

However, some of his excuses have left people bewildered. I’ve already written about his assertions that, in the future, Disney will avoid any of the “culture wars” the company’s been embroiled in this decade. Not to mention his promise that there will be less progressive “messaging” in future Disney releases.

He’s also now trying to explain why the “The Marvels” is bombing at the box-office. It’s set to become the first ever Marvel movie to not cross the $100 million mark domestically, and it won’t even come remotely close to that figure.

As part of his damage control campaign, Iger is now indirectly smearing “The Marvels” director Nia DaCosta, the first female black director to ever helm an MCU movie.

Iger, interviewed during the New York Times’ DealBook Summit, claims DaCosta needed extra help to make her movie better, but it never could arrive due to COVID:

The Marvels was shot during COVID … there wasn’t as much supervision on the set, so to speak, where we have executives [that are] really looking over what’s being done day after day after day.

These last few weeks, there’s been a coordinated effort by Disney to throw DaCosta under the bus. Here are a few stories that suddenly popped up in the trades as “The Marvels” was struggling at the box-office …

A 11.01.23 Variety report had someone from Disney leaking to the trade that, while “The Marvels” was still in post-production, DaCosta disappeared — it turns out that she had already started to work on her next film, “Hedda.” This source told Variety, “If you’re directing a $250M movie, it’s kind of weird for the director to leave with a few months to go”

DaCosta pushed back on the story by saying that Disney was very well aware about the obligations she had for her next project: “They knew the entire time that I had an obligation—a green-lit movie with people who were waiting for me.” DaCosta said. Adding, “And I pushed that and then I pushed it again and then I pushed it again. Eventually, we all knew that if [The Marvels] pushes again, I’m not going to be in LA to do the rest of this in person.”

This leak to Variety was a way for Marvel to scapegoat DaCosta. I’m not sure how it can be interpreted any other way.

Then, a few days later, another leak, this one to THR. This report suggested that DaCosta was a no-show at the private cast-and-crew screening of “The Marvels” on November 8 in Los Angeles. DaCosta quickly fought back by saying she was never invited to the screening! “Nia would have been there,” her rep said in a statement. “She would do anything for her cast and crew.”

Suffice to say, Disney needed a scapegoat for the massive failure of “The Marvels.” They’ve decided that it’s going to be DaCosta. We should also note that DaCosta admitted, around a month ago, that she had zero creative control on the movie. She bluntly stated, The Marvels” was very much “a Kevin Feige production, it’s his movie.”