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Troubled Production / Marvel Comics Films

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Much like its Distinguished Competition, roadblocks were aplenty when making films based on Marvel Comics characters.

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    Marvel Cinematic Universe 
While the Marvel Cinematic Universe was, for the most part, a smooth operation between 2008 and 2019, it still experienced a few troubles from time to time. In recent years though, especially since the disruptions of the COVID-19 Pandemic, Marvel Studios have seen an increase in troubled development of films and TV shows. A report by The Hollywood Reporter then revealed just how extensive the problems were especially on the later TV division, with Marvel doing constant re-tooling and showcasing a lack of understanding of how TV shows work. Then another report by Variety showcased how the MCU had been facing numerous production issues in recent years with the studio scrambling to course correct and get the franchise back on course.
  • Ant-Man became a critical and commercial success upon its release in 2015, but it spent many years facing ridicule and production problems from a studio that wasn't sure what to do with the property. It may have the most interesting production tale of all the films in the MCU.
    • The idea of an Ant-Man film had been kicked around since The '80s, with Stan Lee trying unsuccessfully to lobby Marvel to make a movie based on it because it was one of his favorite properties. New World Entertainment (Marvel's parent company) flirted with the idea of doing a film during this time, but the project was canned after briefly going into pre-production and nothing occurred with the property for years.
    • In 2000, Artisan Entertainment signed a deal to develop a number of properties based on Marvel licenses (in a way similar to what the MCU eventually morphed into), but production once again stalled and the deal never went anywhere. A year later, Edgar Wright wrote a script treatment for an Ant-Man film that was heavily influenced by the crime genre, but Artisan rejected it on the grounds that it wasn't appealing to children.
    • Nothing occurred until 2004, when Wright met Kevin Feige and told him about the rejected treatment. Together, they presented the same pitch to Marvel studio head Avi Arad, who loved it and commissioned them to go ahead with the project. It was during this time that the seeds for the MCU were put into place, as Marvel soon after announced its plans to self-finance films based on a stable of different characters.
    • The film was officially announced at the 2006 San Diego Comic-Con, where Wright did interviews detailing proposed script elements, some of which were in the final product (like a prologue scene with Hank Pym and a flashback to one of his adventures). Work began on the script, and the first draft featured similar story beats to the finished film, including a villain named Greydon Clark who wore a version of the Ant-Man suit called the "NanoWarrior" (which would later become Yellowjacket).
    • The script spent years stuck in revisions and redrafts. Wright initially told Empire magazine that he had revised the script in 2008 and made it a lot lighter, but news from the production went silent for two years, after which Wright claimed that the script wasn't a "priority" property like Iron Man and not fitting the chronology of what would eventually become The Avengers.
    • Several more years passed, and Feige eventually became president of Marvel Studios. Wright stated in July 2010 that even though he had spoken with Feige multiple times about the project, the studio still hadn't figured out what they wanted to do with the property. A year later, screenwriter Joe Cornish (who had been working on rewrites with Wright) announced that they had written a second draft and delivered it to Marvel. It took another year (and another script rewrite), along with some unfinished test footage filmed by Wright showing lead character Scott Lang beating up enemies in his miniature form, before Marvel officially announced the project in October of 2012.
    • The next year was spent on pre-production, with Wright and Cornish reportedly turning in several more rewrites and drafts. The release date was moved up from November 2015 to July of the same year, but filming was set back when a plan to shoot the film in the U.K. was scuttled after a dispute over shooting locations, and production was moved back to the States. Not helping matters was that Marvel was forced to hold up production so that Wright (who was working on The World's End) had to deal with a producer who was diagnosed with cancer.
    • Production went off the rails just before filming began (and with sets already being built), with Feige and Wright getting into arguments and the latter being reportedly infuriated when revisions were ordered without his consent or involvement. As a result, Wright announced that he was leaving the project and Marvel announced soon after that they had parted ways with the director. For his part, Feige admitted that the earlier drafts just weren't working the way he had wanted, and that the collaborative process on the films in the MCU was likely more than Wright was willing to handle. Wright's departure caused a stir with other Marvel directors and actors, including Joss Whedon (who wrote a post on Twitter indicating that he was taking Wright's side - and foreshadowing his own issues on Avengers: Age of Ultron), and cast member Patrick Wilson (who tweeted that he was confused and unsure of the film's future).
    • As rumors flew about the project, lead actor Paul Rudd approached his friend, director Adam McKay, to direct the project, but the latter turned it down even after an official offer from Marvel.
    • Even as Marvel hired a new director (Peyton Reed) to helm the project, more bad news hit. Cinematographer Bill Pope, composer Stephen Price and actors Wilson, Kevin Weisman and Matt Gerald had exited the film.note  Despite this, Feige assured people during press interviews that the film would still honor Wright's original pitch, and that McKay would be contributing to the script. More cast members were officially announced, including Evangeline Lilly, who stated during the 2014 Comic-Con that she hadn't even received a script yet.
    • Filming finally began in August 2014 and went exceptionally smoothly, despite internet outrage over an interview with Michael Douglas stating that the character of Janet Van Dyne (who was the original Wasp) died prior to the movie's events.note  The film was eventually released for its July 2015 opening and proved to be one of Marvel's biggest solo superhero successes, grossing more than $500 million worldwide at the box office.
    • Not only that, it turned out that Feige was misblamed for the Executive Meddling rewrites that resulted in Wright's departure, but in fact Marvel Entertainment CEO Isaac "Ike" Perlmutter and the Creative Committee (Joe Quesada, Alan Fine, Dan Buckley and Brian Michael Bendis). This along with Whedon's disillusionment after Age of Ultron led Feige to have Marvel Studios switch from Marvel Entertainment to Walt Disney Studios after the film's release.
  • Captain America: Civil War faced some ugly pre-production problems. While the production itself seems to have gotten by without much issue beyond the movie going over budget, and they were able to fit Spider-Man snugly into the plot just as it seemed as though it was too late to include the recently re-acquired character into the film, the story was different behind the scenes at Marvel HQ. The tension between Feige and Perlmutter, who had been on bad terms with one another for a long time, finally came to a boiling point. Perlmutter threatened to fire Robert Downey Jr. when he was officially signed-on to take part in the movie, due to the actor's high salary demands. Feige, having none of that, objected and got the Disney bosses involved. He went to Alan Horn (the head of Disney's live-action projects) and threatened to quit then and there if he didn't get out from under Perlmutter. The end result is that the MCU's Creative Committee — a group that Perlmutter was involved with that a history of being an Obstructive Bureaucracy — was removed from working on further movies and that Feige was given an Auteur License by Disney, separating Marvel Studios from Marvel Entertainment. Spider-Man: Homecoming was the first movie to be produced under the new arrangement.
  • Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 suffered from this thanks to alt-right commentator Mike Cernovich instigating a politically-motivated attack on director James Gunn, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 was doomed to endure a rough pre-production process. Shooting was set to start in 2018, but after Cernovich unearthed several of Gunn's offensive tweets he made a decade prior (and had sincerely apologized since), Horn impulsively fired Gunn. Problem is that Horn made his snap decision without first consulting anyone else, throwing the MCU's post-Avengers: Endgame cosmic plans into disarray since Gunn was supposed to oversee those storylines. As Gunn was dismissed during Disney's acquisition of 20th Century Fox, Disney couldn't immediately rehire him despite the outcry from fans and the cast, lest such an action would be seen as sign of weakness. Although Disney kept Gunn's script as damage control, they couldn't find anyone else to direct the film as nobody wanted to be dragged into the controversy, leading to the film's production being put on hold indefinitely. Although Gunn was rehired in March 2019 when Disney finished its acquisition of Fox, by then he had signed on with the rival DC Films to write and direct The Suicide Squad. In the end, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 wouldn't premiere until 2023, 3 years after its intended date. Even when Gunn was rehired, he admitted the film was hard to craft due to a billion reasons beginning with its size and complexity.
  • Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness was one of the more noticeable victims of Phase 4’s production woes:
    • The film hit a snag early on with Scott Derrickson stepping down from the director's chair over Creative Differences. What said 'differences' were not openly known, but some people theorize it had something to do with the film's tie-in with WandaVision. Derrickson would later refute the suspected animosity, by revealing his decision to leave the project was from ongoing mental health issues. Ultimately, Sam Raimi stepped in as a replacement.
    • There were also scripting problems, as Benedict Cumberbatch revealed that they didn't have a third act ready when they started shooting.
    • The film received "significant" reshoots, according to various articles and interviews in the weeks leading up to the film's release. How much of the film was reshot is not entirely clear, but it was described by actor Bruce Campbell (who cameos in the film) as being significant enough to warrant extensive reordering, allegedly due to a combination of Marvel "forcing" reshoots on Raimi, and other scenes being jettisoned entirely due to script and scheduling changes. By the time the film was completed, the script had been allegedly rewritten at least thirty-three times.
    • Elizabeth Olsen later admitted that the film's writer, Michael Waldron, hadn't seen the entirety of WandaVision (due to the close proximity of both productions). This unintentionally led to Wanda's TV story arc being repeated for the film.
  • Guardians Vol. 3, Multiverse of Madness, and the rest of Phase 4, originally scheduled to launch May 2020 with Black Widow, were beset en masse by this trope when the COVID-19 Pandemic resulted in all of their release dates being pushed back by months due to the mass closure of movie theaters and the production of all of the post-Black Widow films being put on hold.
    • This also extended to the Disney+ shows that Feige intended as glue in-between films for Phase 4 and further. The only one that got near completion was The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which still needed weeks of shooting when the first lockdowns began. As a result, WandaVision wound up overtaking it as the first show on the service, as it was easier to film (being a soundstage-based show reminiscent of old sitcoms, as opposed to the other resembling Marvel's typical action movies, and thus requiring location shoots). Releasing them exactly in the order Feige intended them to release in-between films was paramount to the cohesiveness of the story arc for that phase (in fact, it was later revealed that Julia Louis-Dreyfus's character Contessa Valentina de Fontaine was supposed to be introduced in the post-credits stinger to Black Widow, making her appearance in the fifth episode of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier an unintended Early-Bird Cameo). Though funnily enough, a lot of fans ended up saying her appearance in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier actually works much better as an introduction to the character, and her more abrupt appearance in the intended first scene would have been way too jarring.
    • Another casualty is that some of the WandaVision finale wasn't able to be filmed until after the shutdown restrictions began to be lifted, and Kat Dennings wasn't able to make the new shooting dates. The crew knew full well that it would be ridiculous for Darcy to not appear in the finale at all (which would leave her with Offscreen Inertia since episode 7 ended with Vision abandoning her to be stuck in an eternal traffic jam), so her role was rather awkwardly changed to simply driving a truck into Hayward's car as he tries to flee, with Dennings filming a brief close-up shot in front of a greenscreen, and a throwaway line by Monica where she mentions to Jimmy that Darcy skipped out on the debriefing because "debriefs are for the weak".
    • The pandemic also prevented an episode of What If...? focusing on Gamora from being completed, which got especially awkward as the Season 1 finale was a crossover between most of the season's main characters, and it proved impossible to remove this Gamora's scenes and have the episode make sense. So the finale simply presents the original script where we're supposed to already know about her, this time playing out as a Call-Forward to when her episode was completed for Season 2.
  • Phase 4 and the MCU in general were then hit by one of the worst things that can happen to a franchise, when Chadwick Boseman passed away on August 28, 2020, from colon cancer, throwing a wrench into future plans for a sequel to Black Panther... or any plans for T'Challa's future appearances anyway. Eventually, it was announced that T'Challa would not be recast to honor Boseman's memory, and the planned sequel would now focus on the world of Wakanda around him.
    • The sequel, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, on top of nearly five rewrites following Boseman's death, had to shut down for several months when Letitia Wright (Shuri) suffered an unspecified but apparently extremely serious injury. The accident shone a spotlight on concerns about the safety of movie sets, especially after the tragic death of Halyna Hutchins on the film Rust. Early in 2022, production had to be delayed again due to an Omicron variant outbreak that affected ten cast members including Lupita Nyong'o (Nakia). Besides COVID, filming scenes underwater proved rather challenging as the crew had to use new material for props and most of the cast needing to learn how to swim, which added more months to filming.
  • In early 2023, Marvel was hit with two separate scandals that caused concern for Phase 5 going forward in addition now to other problems:
  • In September 2022, three years after it was announced, the original director of the upcoming Blade reboot, Bassam Tariq, exited the project due to creative differences and the script had to be extensively rewritten, with the film being pushed back to 2024. Two months later, French director Yann Demange was hired to replace him. Then later on in April 2023, Nic Pizzolato of True Detective fame was hired to re-write the script. But then right before production was about to start the WGA writer’s strike began, putting the film’s production to a halt until the strike is resolved. And then the Variety article reported that star Mahershala Ali had threatened to quit the movie over issues with the script (in one draft, Blade would have ended up becoming a supporting character in his own movie), leading Kevin Feige to hire Michael Green, who had been nominated for an Oscar for writing Logan, to write a new script from scratch, and that Marvel had now reportedly considered making the movie for under $100 million. This has led many online to believe the film is cursed or will never get finished. And as of March 2024, one of it’s supporting actors Aaron Pierre has exited the project.
  • Echo reportedly had a troubled production. The show was originally meant be released in mid-2023 but was later delayed to November 2023 instead, and then later to January 2024. This is because that Kevin Feige thought the show was unreleasable in its original format due to various unknown production problems behind the scenes. As a result, Marvel Studios conducted various reshoots on every single episode. The announcement that Echo would have all the episodes dumped at the same time, rather than being released weekly like previous Marvel shows on the platform, made some believe that Marvel just wanted to get it over with. Ironically, the show turned out to be a Sleeper Hit and did surprisingly well, and according to this report by The Hollywood Reporter, led to a spike in viewership for the other street-level shows.
  • Despite some initial hype, Secret Invasion (2023) by all accounts was a difficult production.
    • When the show was first announced in the fall of 2020, Kyle Bradstreet, supervising and co-executive producer of Mr. Robot, was announced to be the showrunner. He oversaw principal photography from September 2021 to late April 2022. In fact, principal photography overlapped with that of The Marvels, with Samuel L. Jackson going back and forth between the two sets. Then in July 2022, it was announced that there'd be reshoots on this show, which happened from July 2022 to November 2022 and also happened concurrently alongside reshoots for The Marvels.
    • The reshoots were overseen by a new showrunner, Brian Tucker. Based on the credits, Tucker reshot a good amount of the show to the point of effectively taking over as main showrunner. This is despite the fact that Tucker had significantly less experience than Bradstreet, having only written a single film that did poorly at the box office (Broken City, released in 2013). Not helping matters was that only three months passed between the wrapping of principal photography and reshoots, meaning Tucker was hired somewhere in that timeframe and had very little time to rewrite the whole show, and then only four months to shoot those rewrites. It got to the point where director Ali Selim said that they were still trying to figure out how exactly the finale would play out by the time the first episode had aired.
    • As such, the end result was a show with two clashing visions between two very different writers. Unfortunately, this tumultuous production didn't quite pay off in the end, as Secret Invasion would end up being the lowest-rated MCU show on Disney+, with the finale in particular being singled out for criticism, earning a pitiful 7% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
    • Speaking of which, fans quickly noticed tons of footage in the trailers was never in the finished episodes, a car chase Emilia Clarke mentioned having shot with Samuel L. Jackson was cut and Carmen Ejogo was cast in a substantial role but her scenes were either cut or recast as she is nowhere in the series.
    • Bradstreet’s firing was confirmed by an article by The Hollywood Reporter on Marvel TV which revealed he only worked on the show for a year than was fired, with original cinematographer Remi Adefarasin departing as well with the re-shots commencing shortly after, meaning both Adefarasin’s and Bradstreet’s credits are In Name Only.
  • The same article about Marvel TV also revealed that Daredevil: Born Again was plagued with problems. The WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes happening back to back played heavily into these issues, Matt Murdock wouldn’t have suited up as Daredevil until the fourth episode and according to sources in the Hollywood Reporter article, the show's lack of action and grit compared to the Netflix show wasn’t going over well. Also, the revelation that Foggy Nelson and Karen Page were going to be killed offscreen in the first episode, despite both Elden Henson and Deborah Ann Woll being eager to reprise their roles, was met with an acidic reception by fans to say the least. This led to the shocking decision to fire the writing / directing staff and restart the production from scratch. It says a lot that there was universal praise over the news that Dario Scardapane, who'd been an executive producer on The Punisher, had been hired as showrunner. Likewise, new directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead (fresh off the positive reception to their work on the second season of Loki) quickly endeared themselves to fans when they revealed that they were prepping by going through as much Daredevil material as possible. On top of this, set photos and video revealing that that Henson and Woll had been rehired to reprise their roles as Foggy and Karen were also met with a warm reception, as were later photos that revealed that several other cast members from the original show were returning, including Wilson Bethel as Benjamin "Dex" Poindexter, Jon Bernthal as Frank Castle, and Ayelet Zurernote  as Vanessa Marianna Fisk.
  • By all accounts, Loki has been largely problem free, even becoming the first MCU property not to have re-shoots. The biggest being COVID understandably caused issues in filming and writer Eric Martin had to re-write the finale and large parts of the first season with the other writers before being promoted to showrunner with season 2. Given the positive reception to the show’s second season and the divisive nature of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness which former head writer Michael Waldron wrote, this seems to be a case of Growing the Beard. However, the show had to deal with the fallout of allegations of abuse against Kang and Victor Timely actor Jonathan Majors and since he’s a major part of the season, they couldn’t reshoot his scenes so instead they removed Majors from most of the marketing.
  • A Variety article shed light on some of the production woes behind The Marvels (2023). The movie had its release date change five times, starting from July 8, 2022 to November 10, 2023 due to to the general logjam of content. There were four weeks of reshoots to smooth out the story and make it “coherent.” Said reshoots overlapped with reshoots for Secret Invasion (2023), meaning Samuel L. Jackson had to split time between both projects. The production budget ballooned up to a whopping $275 million, though a tax credit to film in the UK knocked Disney's bill down to $220 million. The 2023 WGA/SAG-AFTRA Strikes threw a wrench into any rewrites and promotion, the latter of which had already been seen as poor pre-strike — in part because the final release date gave it less than two weeks to be first priority in theaters for corporate owner Disney, which was about to release their centennial animated feature Wish (2023), and in part because of a struggle to address the Continuity Lockout inherent to a film reliant on the events of not only the previous movies but three streaming shows, two of which had already flopped. Concerns were also raised when director Nia DaCosta stepped away from the project during post-production to start work on her next film, Hedda, in London. Given the massive reshoots and DaCosta’s sudden departure, some speculated there might have been on-set friction between her and the MCU team. For her part, DaCosta would later refute the report, saying that Marvel was aware of her production scheduling for Hedda and that she still remained involved in The Marvels, despite the relocation (which is also not an unusual practice as Steven Spielberg, Ridley Scott and Ron Howard have done so on multiple occasions). Ultimately, the film ended up a massive Box Office Bomb, opening to a dismal $109 million global total and suffering massive weekend to weekend drop-offs.
  • All the above post-COVID issues caused Deadpool & Wolverine to end up the only MCU film to release in 2024. That one itself had minor production issues due to Disney's acquisition of 20th Century Fox and the 2020s guild strikes in Hollywood.
    • The movie was originally intended to be released under the slate of 20th Century Fox, but the project as a whole wound up being delayed when the studio was acquired by Disney. After that, Ryan Reynolds and the creative team decided to wait and see what Marvel Studios had planned for the character. Fortunately for them (as well as the fans), Kevin Feige confirmed that Reynold's Deadpool would not be rebooted into the MCU, but kept as is (in sharp contrast to the X-Men or Fantastic Four, who would get full-on reboots).
    • Filming initially began in 2023, with a promotional image showing Reynolds and Jackman in full costume. However, the WGA strike didn't allow Reynolds to make any alterations to the script via ad-libbing, and production was shut down entirely when the SAG-AFTRA strike took place. After several months, everyone was able to return to set and finish filming by the end of January 2024.

    Spider-Man film series 
The Spider-Man film franchises have had a long, sticky production history, with various projects either failing to get off the ground or dealing with significant development woes:
  • There are many reasons why The Cannon Group's attempted film adaptation of the property never went anywhere in The '80s — cost overruns, script treatments that had Stan Lee going into fits (Spider-Man was originally envisioned by Menaham Gohan as a character akin to The Wolfman — an eight-armed, suicidal monster) and script rewrites that made the concept even worse. A combination of factors (including the failure of Masters of the Universe, a breakneck production schedule that had sets being built before the script was finalized and Cannon's existing financial problems) led to the project being scrapped and folded into Cyborg (1989), which turned out to be a modest hit for the company.
  • The circumstances behind Spider-Man 3's development are so infamous that it caused Sam Raimi to bow out of production of a planned fourth installment just before it went into production. The details behind this film's sordid history have been covered in multiple works, including the Spider-Man Chronicles book, numerous interviews and a feature-length documentary by YouTube creator Midnight's Edge:
    • The troubles started soon after Spider-Man 2's release. Just after the film's debut, Sony Pictures immediately initiated production of a third installment, with Sam and Ivan Raimi spending two months crafting a treatment that would see Peter Parker growing as a character (and coming to realize that criminals have humanity), the Green Goblin storyline being closed off, and Spider-Man facing off against the Sandman (and later, the Vulture, who was intended to be played by Ben Kingsley, with the latter being in negotiations for the role). Producer Avi Arad ordered Raimi to include fan-favorite character Venom in the film, despite his objections.
    • Rumors after the film's release (and mentioned in the retrospective by Midnight's Edge) suggest that Raimi hired Topher Grace to play Eddie Brock out of spite towards Arad, while the latter reportedly wanted Venom in the film in order to setup a spinoff (he would get his wish, in a roundabout way, more than a decade later with the release of the standalone Venom (2018), which is set in a different continuity). In addition, Arad and the producers shoehorned in the Gwen Stacy character, and there was so much material on the drawing board that scriptwriter Alvin Sargent planned out scripts for an additional film after 3 in order to resolve all the subplots. Years later, Raimi would say in interviews that it was his fault for not keeping the various subplots trimmed down and in focus, and that he didn't believe in all the characters.
    • Kirsten Dunst only came back to the franchise on the condition that she would not be treated as a Damsel in Distress again, much like her involvement in the third act of both prior films, and after being told that Gwen would be taken hostage by Eddie/Venom during the climax (Mary Jane's role would be to convince Harry to help Peter during the final battle). The producers reportedly promised her this wouldn't be the case, but changed their minds afterward. They had to mollify Dunst (who was reportedly upset at the change) by making MJ into more of an Action Survivor, via giving her more to do (throwing a cinder block at Venom's head, for example) and swinging on hanging webs on her own, yet a number of screaming sounds she makes (taken from the bridge scene in the first film) were overdubbed onto the scene after filming was completed. In the audio commentary for the film's DVD release, Raimi says that he had to create a setpiece to put the character in danger in order to get the project completed on-time, and that he was not only angry at himself for having to renege on his promises to Dunst, but that telling her about the changes was one of the hardest things he ever had to do as a director.
    • Bryce Dallas Howard (who played Gwen) learned that she was pregnant while filming the stunt scenes (which she decided to perform herself)... just before she was injured on-set when a desk hit her as she was shooting a scene where she falls out of the window of a building. Thankfully, neither she nor her baby were injured. Conversely, Thomas Haden Church (Flint Marko/Sandman) broke three knuckles when he punched a real brick during filming of the fight scene with Spider-Man in the New York subway system.
    • The film was intended to be much Darker and Edgier, but numerous sequences and subplots were removed from the final product. Chief among them were scenes showing Peter being tempted by the Black Suit (and Foreshadowing that it was sentient by having it breathe as Peter looked on at it), along with a scene where he looks into a mirror and sees a nightmarish vision of himself as a monster. Another excised subplot had to do with Flint's daughter, who he would visit in a park in the shape of a sandcastle. Flint would learn during the finale that his daughter's illness is terminal and she begs him to spare Spider-Man, as she wants to die knowing that her father is a good man. Multiple participants in the production confirmed that the script was tweaked numerous times throughout filming.
    • Production was so strained that at one point, Raimi was helming multiple units himself, while cinematographer Bill Pope had trouble lighting scenes at night correctly because of the number of characters wearing black costumes or armor. Not helping matters was an incomplete trailer that leaked midway through production from promotional company Ant Farm, and showed off Venom for the first time after Sony had taken pains to keep the character's identity a secret.
    • Danny Elfman originally had no intent on returning to the franchise due to difficulties working with Raimi during production of the previous film. Christopher Young (who contributed themes for 2) was brought in to create the entire soundtrack, but this was changed after Young reportedly wrote a love theme that the producers didn't like, forcing the latter to bring Elfman back into the fold to aid with development of the score. This, in addition to musicians John Debney and Deborah Lurie being brought in to reportedly rewrite Young's love theme, led to a wildly disjointed tone in the film's music.
    • While the final product was a box-office smash (grossing more than $890 million against a $250 million budget), it received a polarizing reception from fans who complained that it was overstuffed and poorly paced. Despite this, it was not the Franchise Killer it retroactively came to be seen as — there were still plans to produce a Spider-Man 4.
    • Even an alternate cut of the film ran into problems. The Editor's Cut (reportedly created by Bob Murawski to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the film in 2017) was done primarily to restore Young's original score, as well as adding additional scenes (including the breathing Black Suit scene and the "sandcastle" scene with Sandman and his daughter at the park), but it ran into its own issues when it was released unannounced, first by someone at Sony unintentionally leaking it on Amazon (where it could be streamed) then as an unlisted extra on the U.S. Limited Edition boxset.
  • Spider-Man 4 is a notorious example of this trope, due to running into significant problems in the formative stages:
    • Production on 4 had already begun midway through filming on 3, with screenwriter David Koepp being courted by Sony and plans underway for James Vanderbilt to write a fifth and sixth installment. At the time, it was speculated that Vanderbilt's script could serve as a jumping-off point for a franchise reboot should none of the principal players want to take part.
    • Raimi wanted to have Dylan Baker reprise his role as Dr. Curt Connors (who would finally transform into The Lizard) and The Vulture, who was planned to be played by John Malkovich, only to be told by Sony execs that they didn't want to use Lizard because his planned concept "didn't look human enough". Instead, Anne Hathaway was pursued to play an unnamed role, with rumors suggesting she would either play Felicia Hardy/Black Cat or "The Vultress". Reportedly, Sony also wanted to shoehorn Carnage in, and concept art released later showed that Mysterio may have shown up in a cameo or sequence before being arrested by Spidey. Despite no firm commitment from Dunst, Raimi and Maguire were still onboard and shooting was planned to commence in January 2010.
    • Raimi kept delaying the start of production because he was dissatisfied with the script, he would later state in an interview: "It really was the most amicable and undramatic of breakups: It was simply that we had a deadline and I couldn't get the story to work on a level that I wanted it to work. I was very unhappy with Spider-Man 3, and I wanted to make Spider-Man 4 to end on a very high note, the best Spider-Man of them all. But I couldn't get the script together in time, due to my own failings, and I said to Sony, "I don't want to make a movie that is less than great, so I think we shouldn't make this picture. Go ahead with your reboot, which you've been planning anyway." And [Sony co-chairman] Amy Pascal said, "Thank you. Thank you for not wasting the studio's money, and I appreciate your candor." So we left on the best of terms, both of us trying to do the best thing for fans, the good name of Spider-Man, and Sony Studios." As many as 4 different scripts were made, with Raimi apparently disliking all of them.
    • In addition to this, several factors were working against Raimi and his team, including Sony's plans to push the film for a 2011 release (when filming hadn't started by January 2010), plans to have a post-filming 3D conversion (in order to follow on the success of Avatar), another plan to have the film shot concurrently with Spider-Man 5 (which didn't have a script treatment or casting ready at that point) and a need by Sony to have 4 take on Thor, a property the studio used to own but was later acquired by Disney as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Despite Maguire being optimistic about the film's production, Raimi announced on January 10, 2010, that he would no longer be helming the project, causing the film to be formally scrapped soon after.
  • The circumstances that led to Spidey's inclusion in the MCU (beginning with Captain America: Civil War) can be traced to the tumultuous post-filming process that marked the production of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, which became the lowest-grossing film of the Spider-Man franchise:
    • The previous installment, The Amazing Spider-Man, was one of the most financially successful reboots for a superhero franchise, though not quite reaching the highs of Spider-Man 3. At the time of ASM1's production, Sony and Marvel agreed to a licensing deal where the former would retain all of the home and theatre profits in exchange for Marvel retaining all of the franchise's merchandising rights, thus depriving them of massive profits on toy lines and associated goods regardless of how well the film performed. After the first film was released, Sony (which was largely averse to the idea of helming a shared cinematic universe) decided to use the Amazing films (directed by Marc Webb) as a launchpad for future spinoffs and shared movies with other characters they owned.
    • While the actual process of shooting the film was largely stress-free, according to most of the people involved on the production, problems reared their head as soon as filming wrapped. The script (which, according to both Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone, was great) was butchered in the editing room, with executives forcing additional story beats, sequel hooks and narrative pacing that clashed with the tone the film was trying to contain. A major character — Mary Jane Watson herself (played by Shailene Woodley) — had her entire role cut from the film. It is rumored that Kaz Hirai (then-CEO of Sony Pictures) was even active in the editing process to direct the film's tone.
    • It was also around this time that (according to the Sony Pictures email hack of 2013) various Marvel Studios executives began to criticize Sony's plans, with Marvel Entertainment president Alan Fine (who had obtained a copy of the script) complaining about the film's awkward tone and Avi Arad's Executive Meddling to Sony production VP Tom Cohen, and Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige giving the production team a list of his concerns and advice for how to edit ASM2. Some of the hacked emails also show that Amy Pascal was irritated with Arad's handling of the franchise, and was looking for ways to minimize his influence and have another executive producer take over.
    • The film was released to mediocre reviews, despite earning $709 million against an estimated $200-300 million budget, and received significant Creator Backlash (Sally Field went on record saying the film was "ten pounds of shit in a five-pound bag", James Horner refused to get involved in the script meddling and Garfield criticized the poor editing of the final product). Like Spider-Man 3, ASM2 would not only turn out to be a Franchise Killer for the Webb-led series, but also served to take down its associated video game adaptations as well.
    • The problems didn't end with the film's release. Garfield was asked to attend a dinner in July 2014 (in Rio de Janeiro) where Hirai would formally announce a start date for filming of a planned third installment. Garfield then changed his mind after showing up in the city hours beforehand underdressed and sporting a beard (grown for production of Silence) that he supposedly wasn't proud of. Garfield cancelled his attendance at the last minute, forcing Hirai to hastily change his plans and eventually leading him to can the actor altogether. Despite attempts by the studio to force a shared universe by producing a Sinister Six film and a female-led Spider-Man spinoff, the Sony hack (and Sony's own financial woes alongside the aforementioned lack of merchandising profits) eventually led them to host discussions with Marvel, and a deal was struck to put Spidey into Civil War.
  • Development on Venom (2018) was rushed to meet an October 2018 deadline — several months before the release of Spider-Man: Far From Home, a Marvel Studios movie with Spider-Man characters, and a few months before Sony's own Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which Venom itself would promote — and this would directly and indirectly lead to a number of problems down the line. According to Deadline, the production on the film underwent a shutdown leading up to the release, Tom Hardy and the director got into frequent conflicts on the set, and editing on the film was done in an incredibly short timespan to meet the aforementioned release date that had already been set. This especially affected the first teaser trailer, for which there were absolutely no effects for Venom himself yet available, which actually led to a rumor that he would only appear in the final ten minutes, which became so widespread that Hardy himself was driven to debunk it. In any case, it's actually surprising to see that the final film itself doesn't reflect the majority of these problems.
  • There were several problems behind the scenes with Morbius (2022), as revealed by director Daniel Espinosa in this interview with Upworthy. For starters, Espinosa admitted that scenes involving Michael Keaton's Vulture had been either excised or reworked to better match with Spider-Man: No Way Home, resulting in Vulture's headscratching interaction with Morbius in the post-credits scene. Also, the obnoxious method acting Jared Leto exhibited during the Suicide Squad (2016) shoot reared its head here, with Espinosa confirming an account that Leto had taken forty-five minutes to use the restroom due to staying in character as the physically infirmed Morbius; eventually Espinosa and Leto reached a compromise where Leto would be quickly taken to the restroom in a wheelchair when nature called.
  • While it was a critical and box office success, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse allegedly had production issues over the film's animation. Reports claimed that the film's animators were being overwork during Production. Executive Producer Phil Lord was blamed for frequently requesting animators to reanimate finished scenes. And despite not being part of the Film's Directing Team, Lord's requests would even outrank the Directing Team. It was also reported that over 100 animators quit the project during Production.
    • The third installment Spider-Man Beyond The SpiderVerse was initially planned to release back to back with Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. The latter was released in 2023, while Beyond was scheduled for 2024. However, in the above mentioned report, the animation for the third installment had barely progressed. Later in 2023, the sequel was officially removed from 2024 release schedule, delaying the film indefinitely.

    X-Men film series 
  • See the Creators page for X-Men, X2: X-Men United, and X-Men: Apocalypse (Bryan Singer).
  • While the problems with the first two movies took years to be revealed, X-Men: The Last Stand was a very public affair in its issues, especially in pre-production:
    • Bryan Singer left to direct Superman Returns and took Cyclops actor James Marsden and co-writers Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris with him, leading to Matthew Vaughn signing on as director. However, Vaughn himself left shortly before shooting was due to start, saying he couldn't bear to be separated from his young family and with the deadlines imposed by Fox he "didn't have the time to make the movie that I wanted to make". The latter part wasn't helped by Executive Meddling, which demanded the inclusion of as many new characters as possible for merchandising purposes, which resulted in some characters getting unceremonious deaths, and others being left Out of Focus. (Vaughn only accepted to make X-Men: First Class on a tight schedule years later because Fox gave him creative freedom.) In the meantime, Brett Ratner replaced Vaughn.
    • While the revolving door of directors was going on, another problem presented itself in that Halle Berry refused to return as Storm unless she was given top-billing, a significant pay increase and the biggest role of the main cast. She initially refused to budge on her demands, but the financial and critical drubbing taken by Catwoman (2004) knocked some sense into her, and she eventually settled for a much more reasonable fee (Storm did get the largest role of the main X-Men after fan favorite Wolverine, though this was more a by-product of most of the other main characters being killed off or sidelined).
    • A troublesome first week of shooting saw cinematographer Philippe Rousselot, who had originally signed on with Vaughn, storm out of the production. This resulted in Dante Spinotti, who had worked with Ratner on Red Dragon, hurriedly taking over the role and then being replaced himself for the final leg of filming by James Muro, after Spinotti had to honor a prior commitment. In a later magazine interview in his native France, Rousselot called Ratner a "jumped-up little Hollywood asshole" and said that not quitting with Vaughn had been the worst mistake of his entire career.
    • Rousselot wasn't the only person who conflicted with Ratner. Over a decade after the film's release, Elliot Page revealed that, against his wishes, Ratner had outed him on-set as being gay, made various homophobic remarks to him throughout the course of filming, and got one of the producers to threaten to fire him unless he wore a t-shirt saying "Team Ratner" on occasions when he was needed on-set, but not in costume. Vinnie Jones, another person who had originally signed on to work with Vaughn, also complained that Ratner cut most of Juggernaut's lines and retooled the few that he did have to make him much more of a Dumb Muscle comic relief character.
    • A rather telling consequence of the film's hectic production cycle was that it ended up being the first X-Men movie to not have a dedicated product line, as its development was too rushed for ToyBiz to be able to put together action figures for it. There weren't any The Last Stand figures until Hasbro did some in the Marvel Legends line in 2007, a year after the movie's release. Somewhat ironic, since the main reason behind the obscene number of characters in the movie was potential toy sales.
  • X-Men Origins: Wolverine was delayed by weather and Hugh Jackman's commitments with Australia, begun with an unfinished screenplay that was rushed due to the then upcoming 2007-2008 writer's strike - director Gavin Hood detailed that during shooting in Australia, script pages would be sent from LA, at times in the night prior to them being filmed; also, characters such as Gambit and Deadpool were late additions, explaining why the former appears so little and the latter wound up changed to an unfaithful version - and saw Hood entering conflicts with Fox executive and overall bean counter Tom Rothman micromanaging every aspect, right down to repainting sets without telling Hood. Even the movie's title was changed without Hood being informed, with Jackman telling him once he saw it on IMDB. Plus, the second unit didn't match Hood's style, making him feel the action scenes were like ones in an 80s flick. Eventually Richard Donner (husband of producer Lauren Shuler Donner) was forced to join production in order to mellow out things. And an incomplete version with missing special effects leaked online one month before the film's premiere. The film could have ridden out the bad critical and fan reception like the previous film, if not for the disappointing box office. This caused the series to get a partial reboot with X-Men: First Class.
  • The Wolverine was one of the less troubled productions in the series, with most of the difficulty coming from a protracted pre-production phase. Darren Aronofsky spent close to a year developing the film, but ultimately dropped out for much the same reason that Matthew Vaughn had quit The Last Stand, namely having to deal with being separated from his young familynote  and excessive amount of Executive Meddling (plus the studio wanting a PG-13 movie, but Aronofsky wanting to do a hard-R movie). After a regime change, the project was rebooted under James Mangold. After that, things generally went reasonably smoothly, the only major issues coming firstly when Mangold had to miss a few days of filming due to food poisoning and was replaced in the meantime by second unit director David Leitch, and then cinematographer Amir M. Mokri quitting for undisclosed reasons late in the shoot and then taking his name off the movie, resulting in second unit cameraman Ross Emery replacing Mokri and ending up as the solely credited cinematographer.
  • If this article is anything to go by, Dark Phoenix had lots of behind-the-scenes turmoil.
    • The trouble began when Fox executives looked at the poor critical and commercial reception for X-Men: Apocalypse and felt that the film was an anomaly of what was otherwise a consistently well-performing franchise, rather than evidence that audiences were growing frustrated with its creative direction. In a desperate attempt to win back the fans' trust, Fox decided to reboot The Dark Phoenix Saga, which they previously tackled with the aforementioned The Last Stand to disastrous results. Recurring series producer Simon Kinberg was chosen to direct in his feature film debut due to his aforementioned work as a fill-in director on Apocalypse. Although Kinberg had the backing of the stars (including Jennifer Lawrence, who reportedly refused to do the film unless Kinberg directed it), fans were more skeptical given how Kinberg co-wrote The Last Stand, never directed a prior feature film from start to finish, and lost some credibility for his role in the infamous Fantastic Four (2015) reboot.
    • Filming went smoothly, but once Fox executives got to see a rough cut, both them and Kinberg agreed that the film needed extensive reshoots. Unfortunately, the reshoots didn't occur for over a year since Fox had to renegotiate many of the actors' contracts. It was during this time that Rupert Murdoch, having grown disillusioned with the trend of media consolidation, decided to sell Fox and its entertainment assets to Disney, which owned Marvel Comics and would almost certainly move to put the characters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Since the deal wouldn't be finalized for nearly a year-and-a-half, Fox was forced to continue on with the film. The reshoots ended up resulting in the film moving up its release date by several months. All this was happening as the marketing campaign was rolling out.
    • Then things went to hell. James Cameron, who was writing and producing Alita: Battle Angel for Fox, complained that his film was scheduled to open against Mary Poppins Returns, Aquaman and Bumblebee, fearing a box office slaughter from all three. Consequently, Fox moved up Dark Phoenix's release date by four months, only a couple of days after its first trailer dropped, making it a summer blockbuster, while giving Alita the February slot originally reserved for Dark Phoenix. Several Fox executives, including current studio head Emma Watts, rebelled against the move but were overruled. As the merger with Disney closed, many of the film's marketing staff were forced out in the post-merger shakeup, resulting in the film's campaign lacking any sort of message or direction. Not helping matters was that the film, instead of hype building, faced either apathy or merciless mocking on the Internet before its release, seeing it as a Contractual Obligation Project in a franchise that was doomed to end in the merger's aftermath.
    • The end result was a disaster both critically and commercially. The final film was a critically-panned mess that received a lower Rotten Tomatoes percentage score than both The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Fan concerns about Kinberg's lack of experience were validated as even the most generous critics singled out Kinberg's weak direction as a major flaw. Financially, the film was a massive bomb that opened with a whopping $33 million on its opening weekend in America, the lowest opening ever for an X-Men film. Things got worse when bad word-of-mouth lead to the film experiencing a second weekend drop of 71.5%, the worst for the genre since Batman v Superman three years prior. The lack of legs was further exacerbated by the film being pulled from over 1,600 theaters in its third weekend. The film effectively ensured any thought of the X-Men film franchise continuing in its current incarnation would be dashed.
    • The last nail on the coffin came when Disney disclosed a $170 million loss in its studio division for the company's third financial quarter, specifically calling out Dark Phoenix's poor performance as the main reason for the quarter's weaker-than-expected results. Consequently, Disney moved to gut whatever autonomy Fox had left post-merger, taking a direct role in green-lighting films for the brand and shelving almost every film from the studio in the early stages of development indefinitely. The only films that escaped the purge were those connected to valuable IP (i.e. Avatar, Planet of the Apes, etc.), Fox Searchlight fare and those that Disney chose to move to other brands in their portfolio.
  • And to top everything here, The New Mutants had a troubled post-production even worse than Dark Phoenix's production, with a few trips to The Shelf of Movie Languishment, ending the Fox era of X-Men movies with a whimper.
    • The film was shot in summer 2017 for an intended April 2018 release. Following test screenings (which were rumored to not have gone over very well, although this point is disputed), Fox decided to push the movie back ten months to February 2019. One report alleges that the movie wasn't seen as scary enough and that the film needed to be significantly reworked as a result, which isn't exactly reassuring considering that the first trailer focused way more on the horror aspect of the film than the superhero aspect. (Another report explained that the reshoots were meant to counter perceived Executive Meddling and make the movie closer to director Josh Boone's original vision, which had more scares; the same account states that the film tested well.)
    • Following that delay, Fox postponed the release again six months to August 2019, with rumors suggesting that as much as half of the film needed to be reshot. However, with regard to the massive delays to the movie, several factors were still in play; namely, that actors weren't necessarily available for reshoots due to other projects, such as Anya Taylor-Joy in Glass (2019) and Maisie Williams on Season 8 of Game of Thrones.
    • After Disney's acquisition of Fox the release date was delayed yet again to April 2020, nearly three years after filming began, more than two years after its first teaser trailer, and almost a year after Dark Phoenix, which was supposed to be the series' Grand Finale.
    • And with less than two months to go, just as the publicity campaign was beginning in earnest with the creatives explaining it was the Fox-Disney merger that delayed it and there were no reshoots at all (which reviewers and analysts even noted that was detrimental in the end, given not being able to add more footage due to getting caught in the shuffle of a studio purchase made for a less coherent production),note  the film was delayed again due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. Those looking forward to it begged Disney to just release it to one of their streaming services instead, even though it would likely cost the studio millions, but due to the Disney-Fox contract it had to go to theaters. Finally it was released on August 28... the same weekend as the international rollout of Tenet, which had become probably the most hyped movie of the year not only due to the huge anticipation that automatically comes with any project helmed by Christopher Nolan, but also due to it being the first tentpole release following the prolonged shutdown of the cinema industry.
    • Despite the pandemic remaining a deadly ongoing concern in the United States, with health experts actively discouraging people from going to enclosed movie theaters even operating at reduced capacity, Disney refused to hold advance screenings (in-theaters or digitally) to critics. This backfired badly, as many were unwilling to go to public screenings. The Sunday night after opening, there were only 40 reviews collected by Rotten Tomatoes versus 137 for Bill & Ted Face the Music, which opened the same day but was available as both a theatrical and on-demand title (and a 30% "Fresh" rating versus 80% for Bill & Ted). The total take, counting international grosses, for the first weekend was a mere $10 million. It also was a Box Office Bomb, becoming the third lowest grossing Marvel film. Granted, since Disney had utterly no faith in it ever turning a profit thanks to the tumultuous production, and were far more invested in promoting Mulan for Disney+, another delay wouldn't have mattered anyway as the damage was already done.

    Fantastic Four 
  • Being an Ashcan Copy, The Fantastic Four had some issues during production.
    • Surprisingly, shooting in a condemnednote , rat-infested warehouse on cheap, recycled sets while using old equipment didn't do much to dampen spirits. In fact, it bonded the cast and crew together and made them more intent to do a good job.
    • The first inkling that something was amiss was when dailies and rough cuts stopped being screened for director Oley Sassone and editor Glenn Garland and post-production started languishing. Eventually, the two men started putting the film together in secret.
    • Although production was rushed, the shooting for Jonathan Culp's climactic scene as Doom kept being pushed back and Culp was brushed off whenever he asked when it would happen.
    • The film's first visual-effects artist was hired because he claimed to have been the VFX supervisor on Independence Day. Despite having lofty ambitions and owning lots of equipment, the work he did turn in was unacceptable and he eventually abandoned the project. This forced Sassone and Garland to find a substitute, who did the best job he could despite the time and budget restraints.
    • A couple of pick-up shots were required after principal production. Oley Sassone had to beg for a camera and a couple of rolls of film. A shot of the Thing walking across the street, meanwhile, was done guerilla style because there was no time or money to obtain permits.
    • After the film was completed, the studio, production company, and Marvel all wanted people to forget that it had ever been made. Unfortunately for them, the actors were eager to make the film a success and spent their own money to hire a publicist and travel to conventions and comic book stores to drum up public enthusiasm and, by all accounts, were succeeding. The powers that be eventually bluntly told everyone that the film was never going to get released, which led to disappointment all around because the people involved really were passionate about the project.
  • Fantastic Four (2015)/Fant4stic would be better if the film were called Fantastically Troubled Movie Shoot. A thirteen video series produced by YouTube channel Midnight's Edge detailed the hellish production! Where do we even begin?
    • Much like 1994's aborted The Fantastic Four, the reboot was timed to fulfill a need to retain the intellectual property rights for the franchise. Fox had considered a reboot instead of following the Tim Story movies in 2009, announced it in 2012, but only in 2014, having waited nearly a full seven years, rushed into production with director Josh Trank, who quickly brought onboard a cast (helmed by Miles Teller as Reed Richards, Kate Mara as Sue Storm, Michael B. Jordan as Johnny Storm and Jamie Bell as Ben Grimm) to mixed reactions from fans. Leaked set photos showing the Doctor Doom costume with unfinished CGI didn't help matters.
    • Reportedly, Fox (having micromanaged similar projects in the past) was the one responsible for pushing the Darker and Edgier take on the source material. However, the script was in constant flux until the last minute, with Trank supposedly having to deal with abrupt changes from Fox production head Emma Watts. Likewise, Fox reportedly pulled several action setpieces from the script days before filming was set to begin.
    • Trank and co-writer Jeremy Slater couldn't agree on the kind of movie that they would make — Trank wanted to make a Body Horror Deconstruction film, whilst Slater was more interested in an upbeat film in the vein of The Avengers. Furthermore, Trank would repeatedly bar Slater from any meetings with Fox and not give him access to all their notes, leading to Slater leaving the project early on.
    • Fox gave the film a budget of around $120 million when Trank thought he would have $150 million to work with, leading to scenes being cut to save money. Notably, a fairly impressive scene from the trailers where the Thing leaps out of a plane to dive-bomb a terrorist camp ended up being removed for budgetary reasons. Even the 3D conversion which producer Simon Kinberg hailed as being impressive and immersive was cancelled.
    • According to various sources, there was a battle of wills between Fox and Trank. The latter was reportedly prone to erratic and isolated behavior (including drug use and tardy behavior), made constant changes to the script, sat in a private tent most of the time, abused the production budget and had unclear directions on how to tell the story he wanted. Trank's behavior was supposedly linked to his personal problems - he was having a dispute with his landlord over perceived damage to his rental home in Baton Rouge (which Trank supposedly addressed by defacing photos of the landlord's family after being threatened with eviction and necessitated a Fox executive flying out to personally apologize to the landlord). Others blamed Trank's inexperience helming a feature film for the production issues. His behavior got to the point where he was apparently fired from a planned Boba Fett film (although Trank says he quit). Kinberg, also a producer on the new Star Wars franchise, allegedly did not want to work with Trank again.
    • Trank bent over backwards to convince Fox to hire Miles Teller. The two didn't get along with each other and once almost got into a fistfight. Trank also reportedly got along poorly with Kate Mara, treating her with disdain because she was a mandated hire from Fox.
    • January 2015 was set as the date to finish the last set of reshoots. This interview stated that they still needed to finish them in May 2015.
    • OTOY, the visual effects company that was hired to do work on the film*, was reportedly in way over their heads with the project, and had to deal with a generally-unresponsive and erratic director who requested that The Thing's appearance and size shift between certain shots (not helped one iota by splitting the Thing's effects with the aforementioned MPC, who were likely given similarly vague directions). A number of visual effects sequences — such as the scene where The Thing fights off insurgents in the Middle East — were apparently cut due to Fox not funding the small company enough to make them work. Ironically, the reason they hired OTOY was so that they could save on money — reliance on the company (who were more of a VFX software development studio known for their Octane rendering software than a proper VFX studio) and the cost of reshoots ultimately made the whole affair even more expensive.
    • Following the release of the movie on Blu-ray, the special features for the film feature shots that establish that some visual effects for the film were still unfinished or of low quality by at least two weeks before the movie's release (and even less time than that until the premiere). Along with the aforementioned story of the troubles at OTOY, it's abundantly clear that most of the scenes were taken out of the film due to production being rushed to fit a deadline.
    • Not helping matters was Marvel pushing the characters Out of Focus from its publications, first by canceling the then-current run of the series and then mocking the reboot in an issue of The Punisher by having a group of lookalikes get blown up in an explosion.
    • Planned marketing pushes at the 2015 San Diego Comic-Con amounted to nothing. And the negative publicity was raised once Fox cancelled both the early release in foreign markets and screenings for critics.
    • Midway through production, Fox panicked once they realized Trank was turning in unsuitable material. Eventually, they took control from Trank and conducted their own reshoots in Los Angeles, using body doubles and Teller performing in front of a green-screen. Rumors suggest that Fox hired a "dream-team" (comprised of Kinberg, writer Drew Goddard, and director Matthew Vaughn) to try and salvage the ending. According to at least one account, this resulted in the film's special effects director being fired without warning (and causing him to quit the industry in anger). Anywhere from 20-40 minutes of material were excised from the film and replaced by the reshot ending (notable for the fact that Mara is wearing a wig, having moved on to another film and cut her hair short, then called back for her part).
    • Fox also took control of the film's final cut from Trank, who later remarked (in a since-deleted Twitter post) that it was unlikely that anyone would be able to see the "good version" of the film. Trank also reportedly emailed his staff and cast to congratulate them on finishing production and attempt to lift their spirits (by commenting that he was sure it would be better than most comic book films), to which one unnamed castmember shot him down.
    • The initial early screenings were extremely negative, with at least one participant at a U.K. screening given a comment card asking how Fox should proceed with the franchise. The film debuted to a poor Rotten Tomatoes score (more specifically, the lowest rating for a superhero movie since Catwoman (2004)), C- Cinemascore and middling box office returns, with everyone blaming each other for the film's weak reception. When all was said and done, Fox ended up losing over $100 million once it finished its theatrical run.
    • The film left behind a battlefield of casualties to the careers of those involved. Trank's career went into an irreversible decline, taking over three years to produce another film which ended up going Direct to Video. The careers of the main stars were also heavily damaged, with only Michael B. Jordan escaping permanent decline thanks to his later roles in Creed and Black Panther. Fox co-head Jim Gianopulos, Tom Rothman's former rival at Fox, was forced out of the studio the following summer, a year before his contract was slated to expire; he subsequently jumped ship to Paramount. The film (alongside Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice) also played a major role in gradually phasing out the Darker and Edgier PG-13 superhero movie genre that was popularized by The Dark Knight Trilogy, with subsequent movies such as Suicide Squad and Justice League both failing critically (and, for the latter, commercially), partly because Warner Bros. panicked after Dawn of Justice was poorly received and had the creators try to downplay their dark tone in a fashion that resulted in Mood Whiplash. It was also revealed years later that the film's failure made Fox slash the budget of a film on the X-Men character Gambit which had been set to start shooting just a month later, send its director back to the planning stages, and ultimately causing Gambit to enter a Development Hell it never managed to leave.
  • Eventually, after Disney bought 20th Century Fox, the First Family of Marvel is now on the way to join the Marvel Cinematic Universe. A variant of Reed Richards was brought to Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (played by John Krasinski), and a new Fantastic Four film is set to release in July 2025, starring Pedro Pascal as Reed, Vanessa Kirby as Sue, Joseph Quinn as Johnny and Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Ben.

Others

  • Blade: Trinity was derailed by massive Hostility on the Set, as detailed by writer Chris Parry, an AV Club interview with Patton Oswalt and a 2009 SPIN Magazine online article.
    • Wesley Snipes hated the script, and a long list of directors including prior Blade directors Guillermo del Toro and Stephen Norrington turned the film down for scheduling or creative reasons. David Goyer (writer of Trinity along with the previous movies) stepped in as the only person capable of getting the project going. infuriating Snipes who disliked him from the start.
    • Snipes opted to do as little work as possible, leaving his Stunt Double to fill in for shots that didn't require his face to be visible. Snipes was uncooperative even while on the set, with an Eye Awaken gag having to add his eyes in post-production because he refused to open them while filming. His co-stars also claimed that Snipes accused them of racism while constantly using racially charged insults himself. Things got so bad between Snipes and Goyer that Snipes would only communicate through Post-it notes signed "From Blade".
    • After the film underperformed at the box office, Snipes sued New Line Cinema for lost profits and violating his contract, which supposedly said he had control over who the director would be and that the studio went over his head by installing Goyer. The suit was later privately settled but the film proved to be a Star-Derailing Role for Snipes, made all the worse by tax evasion charges in 2006 which sent him to US federal prison for three years. Goyer hasn't directed another major film but continues to have a prolific screenwriting career, notably with The Dark Knight Trilogy and the DC Extended Universe.

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