Troubled Production / DC Comics Films

Putting the iconic superheroes of DC Comics on the big screen is apparently no easy task. Not helping matters is Warner Bros.' infamous habit of Merchandise-Driven decisions, brisk reactionary decisions regarding perceived box office or critical disappointments and heavy amounts of Executive Meddling on such films.

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Superman

• The book Superman vs. Hollywood: How Fiendish Producers, Devious Directors, and Warring Writers Grounded an American Icon details all the production turmoils that hit the Superman IP from The '40s up to 2008.
• The Superman film series starring Christopher Reeve:
  • Superman was dogged by clashes between producers Ilya and Alexander Salkind and director Richard Donner over the film's tone; the Salkinds wanted a more slapstick film, while Donner wanted the film to take itself more seriously. Casting for the title role took a long time to settle on Christopher Reeve (although he was definitely worth the effort); he also didn't get along with Jack O'Halloran, who played Non. Marlon Brando was, par for the course, a pain in the ass to work with, refusing to put in the effort to remember his lines and instead reading them off baby Kal-El's diaper. On top of that, Brando often refused to get out of his trailer until he was provided with a satisfactory breakfast, leading to, of all people, a 16-year-old Cary Elwes (who was working on the film as an intern) being landed with the job of finding out what Brando liked to eat and where to source it from. Finally, there were special effects problems (not that many breakdowns, but a lot of money to make them work), which contributed to the film falling behind schedule - they filmed both Superman and its sequel simultaneously without much of a clear schedule in the first place. The film was a hit, but the lost profits to the Salkinds over this led to Donner being fired before the second movie was completed.
  • Superman II featured a new director in Richard Lester after the Salkinds fired Donner; by the time Lester was brought on board, around three-quarters of the second film had been shot concurrently with the first film, but the time and budget overruns led to the Salkinds getting cold feet and shutting down production until they saw the box office returns for the first film. When production started anew, Lester didn't just have to film the remaining scenes, but he also had to re-shoot scenes originally directed by Donner due to Directors Guild of America regulations. Both Brando and Gene Hackman both refused to work with Lester, forcing the producers to cobble together the film using some footage from Donner and some from Lester. Some of the scenes were filmed two years apart from each other, leading characters to look different from scene to scene, have completely different hairstyles, or even different hair color. Brando's scenes were cut out completely so that they wouldn't have to pay him.
  • Superman III had perhaps the smoothest production phase of all the Christopher Reeve Superman films, but still had to suffer heavy re-writes after the original script featuring Brainiac and Supergirl was rejected, since it was considered too expensive to film because of its inferior budget compared to the previous two movies (plus, they wanted to give Supergirl her own movie). Reeve did not want to play Superman once again, partly because he was fed up with the role and partly because he felt that Donner had been unfairly treated, leading the producers to scramble for replacements (Tony Danza was heavily considered for Reeve’s role). It was only when they allowed Reeve veto power over the script that they got him back. Apparently Lois Lane’s role was reduced to five minutes after actress Margot Kidder publicly expressed some sympathy for Donner after the Salkinds fired him. Taking Donner and Kidder’s side, Hackman refused to return for this film. The video game that Ross Webster plays in the film was developed especially for the movie but had to be downgraded because the original version was considered too realistic for 1983. Richard Pryor was coked out of his brains during filming. On top of all that, a threatened lawsuit from the producers of Kramer vs. Kramer forced the originally-planned title, Superman vs. Superman: Superman III to be ditched, after the Salkinds decided it wasn't worth the fight.
  • Superman IV: The Quest for Peace basically had no real budget to work with, partly because producers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus were secretly siphoning away funds to finance other projects, which caused all kinds of problems for what should have been a huge film. As if that weren't enough, Kidder later reported the working relationship between her and Reeve soured during filming and that Reeve didn't get along with director Sidney J. Furie either. Reeve only accepted to play Superman once more if he had creative control over the script, hence the anvil-laden plot about the dangers of nuclear proliferation.
  • The production of the fifth Superman movie went through many different versions on the road to becoming Superman Returns, but most infamous was Kevin Smith's Superman Lives, which earned its own documentary titled The Death of "Superman Lives". What Happened?. Smith wanted to write a respectful treatment of Superman's mythos, but butted heads with notorious producer Jon Peters, who made a laundry list of bizarre demands. This included Superman not wearing his iconic outfit, battle a giant robot spider, and give villain Brainiac a robot sidekick Peters described as "a gay R2-D2 with attitude"^note In interviews, Peters admits to the giant spider demand but has disputed the others. Despite Smith leaving the film, it still entered pre-production in 1997 with Tim Burton directing and Nicolas Cage as Superman, with Cage going as far as costume testing◊. The film was canned in 1998 after the failures of Batman & Robin and Steel, having spent $30 million in pre-production costs. All of this became a Running Gag among Superman fans, with Peters becoming a symbol for incompetent Executive Meddling.

Batman

• After the controversy concerning the dark subject matter of Batman Returns, the studio was keen on making Batman Forever a Lighter and Softer film to placate the parental groups and merchandise licensees who had previously threatened to pull out from their partnerships. Even with this in mind, Joel Schumacher had shot a number of scenes that were cut from the final film at the behest of executives. This included a different opening, various character moments, and an ending sequence that was more in line with the Burton films. These cuts were significant enough that the first half of the film was shuffled around in post-production, and the merchandise often referenced much of this cut material.
  • Hostility on the Set led to a very tense shoot. The working relationship between Schumacher and Val Kilmer was said to be very, very bad. Schumacher claimed that Kilmer (whom he described as "childish and impossible") fought with various crewmen, and refused to speak to Schumacher for two weeks after the director told him to stop behaving in a rude way. Tellingly, Schumacher does not talk much about Kilmer in his audio commentary for the film. There were also reports that Tommy Lee Jones disliked Jim Carrey, so much so that he wouldn't even have lunch with him. According to Carrey, the first time he met Jones, the veteran actor growled "I hate you. I really don't like you. I do not sanction your buffoonery." In one of his last interviews before he passed away, Schumacher said that Jones was jealous of Carrey's popularity on set, and that as he also had just won an Academy Award for his role in The Fugitive, gained a swelled head and felt Carrey (who won the role of the Riddler on the heels of the surprise hit Ace Ventura: Pet Detective) was beneath him. In sharp contrast to his experiences with Kilmer and Jones, Schumacher had nothing but praise for Carrey's professionalism, creativity, and commitment.
• The Batman didn't really start off well when writer, director, producer, and lead actor Ben Affleck stepped down from his roles to deal with his personal issues. Matt Reeves took over, turned the project into a new continuity and chose Robert Pattinson as the lead. They got about six weeks of principal photography filmed in early 2020 before getting shut down for six months due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. When the film resumed production the first week of September, production was halted again within three days after Pattinson tested positive for the virus. Production of scenes where Pattinson wasn't needed resumed shortly afterwards with stuntmen in the Batman suit whenever possible while he recovered. Production was supposed to wrap right before Christmas 2020 but didn't until mid-March 2021 due to recurring isolated cases of COVID. For reference, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, which was filmed concurrently with it at Leavesden Studios after the restart and wrapped on the same day, only had one case that caused a shutdown in early February. It also wrapped on time as its production was suspended the day it was supposed to start.

Green Lantern

• Green Lantern (2011), after years in Development Hell, was jump-started once Warner Bros. (sister company to DC Comics) saw Marvel create their own movie studio with an ambitious plan and a successful first step, and decided to also start their own Shared Universe of DC adaptations with a "lesser" character akin to Iron Man. The first signs were positive, with a script by Greg Berlanti (who went on to helm the Arrowverse on television) and comic book writers Michael Green and Marc Guggenheim; comics fan Ryan Reynolds as Hal Jordan; and director Martin Campbell, who helmed two successful James Bond revivals. But then Executive Meddling and trying at all costs to have the movie by 2011 (when Marvel would release Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger, and one year before the heroes team-up in The Avengers) started to bring things down. The studio felt the script was too complicated and ordered rewrites, that made the shooting schedule even more tight. Casting continued into shooting, and while filming, Reynolds suffered a shoulder injury which added further delays. Then during post-production the studio basically froze Campbell out of the editing process, cutting large chunks of the movie in detriment of the narrative, and the special effects teams had to work overtime, ballooning the budget even further. Green Lantern ultimately came out to scathing reviews and public apathy, struggling to pass $100 million dollars domestically and barely covering the $200 million budget worldwide. The plans for it to eventually lead into a Justice League were ditched, and instead WB decided to start the DC Extended Universe with the tried-and-true Superman in 2013's Man of Steel.

DC Extended Universe

• Many films in the DC Extended Universe franchise suffered from production troubles during its turbulent history before being rebooted in the 2020s as the DC Universe after a mixed to negative critical reception, diminishing box office returns, lack of support from fans, critics and general audiences and the gradual decline of the superhero genre.
  • Suicide Squad had a turbulent production to say the least. The Hollywood Reporter published a piece on the film after its premiere, laying out a number of behind-the-scenes problems.
    • The writing process for the film was fairly rushed, with writer-director David Ayer (Fury (2014), End of Watch) completing the first draft for the screenplay in just six weeks, though he was allowed to continue writing it. The backlash against Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice then rattled the executives at Warner Bros., who were now worried that Suicide Squad would meet with a similar response due to not reflecting the "fun and edgy" feel of the trailers. They hired Trailer Park, the company behind the teaser, to edit an alternate cut of the film. Warner Bros.' more lighthearted cut was screened for test audiences alongside Ayer's Darker and Edgier and more somber cut, which led to the new DC Films studio deciding to do extensive and costly re-shoots to try and meet a middle ground between the two takes. It's believed that the decision to essentially merge the two conflicting versions of the film is to blame for the movie's Mood Whiplash, among other criticisms such as poor editing and lack of character development for the titular squad. Rumor has it that the Joker/Harley relationship in particular was significantly made more sympathetic due to poor reactions from test screenings. Further elaborated on here.
  • Justice League had the most chaotic behind-the-scenes issues of any DCEU film, which has been blamed by critics and fans alike for being responsible for the long-term downfall of the franchise.
    • In the wake of the mixed-to-negative reception to Batman v. Superman, Warner Bros. reorganized the DCEU production team in a major way, tightening their leash on Zack Snyder while bumping Ben Affleck up into an Executive Producer role on the film.
    • Right from the beginning, there were clashes over whether or not Snyder should stay on at all, as a "vocal minority" of WB executives blamed him for Batman v. Superman's disappointing reception and feared that his directorial efforts would tarnish the DC brand. Greg Silverman was reportedly repeatedly approached by many within the company who wanted him to fire Snyder. This extended all the way to Time Warner, WB's parent company, who were frustrated at WB for continuing to employ Snyder even after the disastrous critical reaction to Batman v. Superman. The studio executives also disagreed with Snyder's decision to use Steppenwolf, a fairly low-tier villain, as the main antagonist of their landmark crossover film. Ultimately, WB higher-ups like Kevin Tsujihara overruled the dissenters and ultimately kept Snyder onboard, as they were worried that firing the director would be seen as a sign of weakness and send the message that the franchise was in trouble. Despite this, Snyder was kept on a much shorter leash this time, with WB apparently hoping increased oversight could curb his more divisive creative impulses and keep the budget manageable.
    • While the film was already intended to be lighter than its predecessor, the unexpected backlash against Batman v. Superman caused Snyder and WB to skew the movie even more lighthearted. The film was initially going to be a Movie Multipack with Justice League Part One dropping in 2017 and Part Two coming in 2019, but that idea was dropped (Snyder's wife, producer Deborah Snyder, suggested it was never supposed to be a multipack and was just there as a formality, but it's also said that audiences have been growing cold on the whole movie multipack idea). Thus, the planned two-part story was condensed into a single film. Additionally, as a result of the mandated tonal shift, the original script (which featured things like a Bad Future where Earth had been conquered by the forces of Apokolips and a scene of Darkseid murdering Lois Lane to break Superman's spirit) had to be completely thrown out and rewritten from scratch. As a further consequence of Batman v. Superman's poor reception, the studio decreed that Justice League had to be shorter than two hours in length, despite the large number of characters (including three main heroes to introduce), as well as Snyder's previous DC movies being much longer.
    • Snyder eventually turned in an early cut of the film, and while the studio felt it was a step in the right direction, they ultimately thought it was still "too dark" and too similar to its predecessor. Joss Whedon, who'd previously found massive success balancing action, drama, and comedy in a superhero team movie with The Avengers, was hired to write new scenes designed to bring a greater sense of fun and levity to Justice League.
    • In May 2017, shortly after post-production began, Snyder announced in a public statement that he was stepping down from the director's chair to mourn the death of his daughter, who committed suicide a few months prior. Whedon was appointed to take over as an uncredited co-director.
    • As post-production work was underway, it was revealed that WB was spending at least $25 million on reshoots, which is unusually large as the average for a movie of this size is around $10-14 million. This was in part due to several members of the ensemble cast being in the midst of other projects (Ezra Miller for Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, Jason Momoa for Aquaman and Henry Cavill for Mission: Impossible – Fallout; Gal Gadot was pregnant until March and had to turn around and spend a month doing promo for Wonder Woman right after she had her baby), as well as a significant amount of Snyder's footage being cut. This, coupled with WB's continued demands, resulted in the film's budget ballooning to an estimated $300 million. With Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald filming at Leavesden studios, the reshoots had to be moved to another studio. WB owns Leavesden and therefore, didn't have to rent it, so that also added to the budget.
    • Complicating matters was the fact that Cavill had grown facial hair (with a prominent mustache) for his role in Mission: Impossible – Fallout, and Paramount execs prohibited him from shaving it off with the threat of legal action. A proposal was made for Industrial Light & Magic to CGI a mustache into the Mission Impossible shots at no cost to Paramount, but they wouldn't budge. WB was therefore forced to spend even more money to digitally erase and remake the bottom half of Cavill's face to hide his facial hair so that the old and new footage would match (not to mention stick with Superman's established character design). Unfortunately, different effects houses were used for different sequences, with the digital cover-up in the opening scene being especially obvious and leaving a bad first impression upon the film's release. This was additionally present in nearly every scene of Superman in the film, which served as the first clue to eagle-eyed viewers that the film was much more extensively reshot than previously claimed. And to add insult to injury, production on Fallout was delayed for several weeks when Tom Cruise broke his ankle doing a stunt, so Cavill easily could have grown his mustache back in that time.
    • Another factor that raised hell for filming with Whedon was his method of directing. According to Ray Fisher, Whedon was known to lash out at him and the other actors when they didn't deliver his dialogue, word for word, or improvised bits and pieces onto what he had written. In comparison, Snyder often made his actors stick to the script as well, but his directing method was more easygoing and relaxed; allowing the actors room to breathe and improvise if necessary, while still ensuring things moved along efficiently. This added to the tonal dissonance of the final product.
    • Once the reshoots were finished, a major problem emerged when it came to combining the footage shot by Snyder with the new material written and shot by Whedon. The two filmmakers are known for drastically different, conflicting styles, with Whedon's Marvel movies being known for their fun and crowd-pleasing nature, while Snyder's DC films have a reputation for being grim and somber. Consequently, early cuts of the modified film suffered from Mood Whiplash, with test audiences claiming that the darker scenes did not mesh well with the more playful ones. It was very clear that much more work needed to be done to make the film work as a coherent whole and delaying the film's release in order to do so was considered. However, studio executives forced the film to stick with its original release date as they were allegedly only guaranteed hefty bonuses if the film was delivered before TimeWarner's pending merger with AT&T. After an extensive editing process, Whedon and the studio eventually came up with a cut that audiences allegedly felt struck the right balance between drama and fun.
    • The delays in getting a final cut put together meant that the rest of post-production was so rushed that Danny Elfman had to get to work just a day after being hired and hastily score to the film's storyboards instead of filmed footage. He didn't even have time to create music for certain scenes.
      Danny Elfman: I had a lot of storyboards in place of action. There would be full scenes and then a five-minute sequence of storyboards. Honestly, it was like working on an animated film. I didn’t score any of the unused footage — the movie that came out is the movie I scored, it was just in very rough form.
    • Much Hostility on the Set was involved as well, as it turned out. In 2020, actor Ray Fisher (Cyborg) came forward with allegations that Whedon's behavior during the reshoots was "gross, abusive, unprofessional, and completely unacceptable", and he claimed that producers Geoff Johns and Jon Berg had enabled Whedon's antics.^note Fisher's story would turn out to be the first of several allegations of inappropriate behavior by Whedon, most coming from members of Whedon's former cast on the Buffyverse. WB, having launched an investigation into Fisher's claims, engaged in a back-and-forth with the actor claiming that he wasn't cooperating with their questioning (something Fisher denied). Several of the cast members, including Gadot and Momoa, have spoken in support of Fisher; Momoa accused WB of trying to distract from Fisher's story by making a phony announcement of a Frosty the Snowman project that Momoa was purportedly starring in, and Gadot claimed that Whedon blackmailed her into doing the infamous "Flash falls onto Wonder Woman's chest" scene. As of this writing, there is no resolution to Fisher's allegations, but his speaking out has already had some repercussions on WB and Whedon's legacy especially.
    • Knowledge of the film's production difficulties circulated far and wide in the film geek press and among DC fans well before release, such that, by the time it stumbled into theaters to a mixed-to-negative critical reception and disappointing box office, there was already a large chunk of the fanbase clamoring for WB to rehire Snyder so that he could do his own cut of the film. Thanks to fan demand (including several cast members voicing their support), the "Snyder cut" went from a pipe dream to a reality in 2020 when WB announced that Zack Snyder's Justice League would premiere on HBO Max in 2021.
    • The fallout of the theatrical cut of Justice League was massive and had a catastrophic impact on the DC live-action brand with the fan base forever being divided in two and the failure of this movie resulted in the beginning of the end for the DCEU.
  • Ironically, the filming of the additional photography for Zack Snyder's Justice League also hit a bit of trouble, though nowhere near the utter hell the first version of the film went through. Aside from concerns from the COVID-19 Pandemic, Snyder was warned early on to merely complete his original movie and not shoot any newly scripted material. However, sensing that this might be his last chance to do a DC film, he went against the studio and incorporated new ideas into the reshoots, including a cameo from Jared Leto as The Joker. The cameo was initially planned to secretly be shot in Snyder's own backyard to avoid alerting the studio, but ultimately he wound up being given the go-ahead. He also clashed with the studio over the new ending (which blatantly teases a future confrontation with Darkseid), as the WB executives did not want the film to include any Sequel Hooks. Things really became heated when the studio found out that Snyder had covertly shot a scene featuring Wayne T. Carr as the John Stewart version of Green Lantern, which they quickly ordered him to remove due to supposedly having their own plans for Stewart in a future Green Lantern movie (or maybe due to the HBO Max series). Snyder said he was so upset by this development that he considered walking away from the film again, but ultimately he chose to stay to avoid disappointing his fans. Despite this, he was able to reach a compromise with the studio so that Stewart's cameo would be replaced with an appearance from Martian Manhunter, a character WB had no immediate plans for, at the end of the movie.
• The Flash (2023):
  • Officially announced with a March 2018 release date in late 2014, Creative Differences between star Ezra Miller and the studio over the tone of the film, along with the post-Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice troubles, the commitments Miller had to the Fantastic Beasts series and the COVID-19 Pandemic pushed filming all the way back to 2021. These pre-production headaches thankfully didn't bleed into actual production, though some insider reports claimed that Miller was troubled during filming and had "episodes" on the set.
  • Post-production was a different story. Throughout March and April of 2022, Miller was making headlines for a string of violent incidences in Hawaii, being jailed multiple times. Things got worse when Miller was accused of grooming a young activist named Tokata Iron Eyes. Later in the year, Miller continued their crime spree and taunted authorities through social media, becoming a fugitive.
  • All the above led to calls for WB to fire and replace Miller if not cancel the film entirely, but WB only doubled down on protecting Miller and promoting the film, with a nearly finished Batgirl film being canned in August 2022 for the tax write-off and Miller allowed in for reshoots and to attend the premier. While Miller eventually gave a public apology for their actions, many thought it was not enough and the controversies around Miller likely contributed to the film's significant underperformance at the box office.
  • And after returning to film a cameo in secret for Black Adam (2022), Henry Cavill also filmed a scene for this film, which was meant to help reestablish the character in the DCEU after a lengthy absence and tease future appearances. However, the scene was removed after James Gunn took over as the head of the newly rebranded DC Studios and announced that the next Superman film would be a Continuity Reboot starring a new actor as the character.
• Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom:
  • The film was originally slated for a December 2022 release date, coming after The Flash. However, the film was delayed to March 2023 due to the COVID-19 pandemic slowing down the post-production process.
  • This now placed the movie before Flash's new June 2023 release date, which caused a major continuity problem: Michael Keaton had previously filmed an appearance as Batman, following on from his return to the role in The Flash, which now no longer made any sense and reportedly confused test audiences.
  • To rectify this, Ben Affleck was added to the film as Batman during reshoots, with the scene intended for Keaton being reshot with him instead.
  • However, due to post-production taking longer than anticipated and more reshoots being ordered, the movie was delayed again, moving to December, a full half-year after the release of The Flash.
  • This once again caused problems with the Batman role, leaving it unclear whether Keaton or Affleck would be the one to appear in the movie, before the the decision was made to cut him from the film altogether.
  • Heavy reshoots resulted in the film's budget ballooning to over $205 million. Director James Wan, who's reportedly been very unhappy about the whole thing, also had to be hospitalized for undisclosed reasons amidst the reshoots in early August 2023.
  • It also later emerged that Jason Momoa was allegedly drunk on set, tried to intimidate Amber Heard by dressing up like her ex-husband Johnny Depp, and then tried to get her fired from the movie. Heard, who was found to be the victim of domestic abuse at Depp’s hand in a civil trial in the UK and then had a split decision on the matter in the US that found they both defamed each other that was eventually settled out of court, felt like James Wan was unsupportive and treated her like a pariah on set because of the bullying he received online for being associated with her. Her screen time was supposedly drastically reduced because of the controversy. (WB considered firing Heard before the Depp V Heard trial occurred back in 2019, but ultimately the studio didn't take action due to Elon Musk threating legal action against the company if Heard was fired.)
  • By the time the film was ready to hit theaters, the advertising budget was slashed in the wake of the box-office failures of both The Flash and Blue Beetle (as well as Marvel's The Marvels (2023), which opened the previous month). Despite its positioning as WB's flagship holiday season title, the studio devoted far more resources to promoting the lower-budgeted Wonka and The Color Purple (2023), to the point that not only did Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom only get nighttime IMAX screenings while Wonka got matinees (despite Wonka only being optimized for the format rather than filmed for it), but also, there was no red carpet premiere. Instead, the high-end L.A. venue The Grove (effectively an upscale mall) hosted an invitation-only event for "influencers" where only Wan and Momoa made appearances.

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