In terms of big budget flops, “Dark Phoenix” may have taken the cake last year but the way to it was paved by Bryan Singer’s “X-Men: Apocalypse” which scored dismal reviews and sank the good will that had come with the two previous movies that revived the franchise.
Actress Olivia Munn, who has been outspoken about some of the #MeToo problems she has encountered on film sets before such as on “The Predator,” joined the franchise as Psylocke in that film. Recently she spoke to Variety about the fundamental difference in the way male filmmakers are treated than female counterparts on set:
Specifically she recalled an incident during the filming of “X-Men: Apocalypse” when Singer left the production for nearly a fortnight midway through production of the $178 million budgeted film:
“It’s the problem that I always had in this business, way before the #MeToo movement exposed so much. You’re in it and you see these people who keep failing up, and they’re not that great and you think, ‘Really?’ When we shot ‘X-Men,’ I never shot a huge movie like that before. I didn’t know what was right or wrong, but I did know that it seems strange that Bryan Singer could check out and say he had a thyroid issue.
Instead of going to a doctor in Montreal, which is a very high-level, working city, he said he had to go to Los Angeles. And he was gone for about ten days is my recollection. And he said, ‘Continue. Keep filming.’ We’d be on set, I remember there’s a big scene that we’d have, and we’d come back from lunch and then one of Bryan’s assistants would come up and show us a cell phone with a text message on it.
And he texted to the actors, ‘Hey guys. I’m busy right now. But just go ahead and start filming without me.’ And we’d be like, ‘OK.’ And I never thought any of it was normal, but I didn’t realize that other people also thought it wasn’t normal. And the other people who thought it wasn’t normal would be people at high levels, people who make decisions on whether to hire this person. Come to find out it is really strange and it wasn’t OK. But this person is allowed to continue to go on. Fox still gives him Bohemian Rhapsody, and then we all know what happened.”
Singer was ultimately dismissed from the set of “Bohemian Rhapsody” where he was replaced by Dexter Fletcher after alleged similar issues regarding his on-set professionalism. Singer was tbe hired to helm the big-budget “Red Sonja” film adaptation but sexual abuse allegations had struck and Singer was fired from that production.
