'The Marvels' Director Reflects On Film's Box Office Bomb: "Everyone Was Trying To Do The Right Thing"

Nia DaCosta, the director The Marvels, is the latest director to engage in some historical revisionism while reflecting on the film’s box office bomb back in 2023.

In an interview with Deadline to promote her new film 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, DaCosta said, “When I look back on it, I’m just like everyone tried their best. Everyone was trying to make a great film. Everyone tried their best.”

“And I will say, I’m really happy that I have those relationships,” she continued. “I was just visiting the Avengers set last summer, which was really fun, catching up with the producers, and seeing the Russos and some of my friends who are in the movie. It was just really nice to despite how everything went with the box office and the reviews or whatever just knowing that the relationships are still good.”

“I look back and everyone tried their best. Everyone was trying to do the right thing and it is what it is,” she concluded.

Just last year in April, DaCosta shared during an appearance at Dublin’s screenwriting festival Storyhouse that the final film was not what she had envisioned at all. Deadline reported she said, “It was interesting because there was a certain point when I was like, ‘Ok, this isn’t going to be the movie that I pitched or even the first version of the movie that I shot’ so I realized that this is now an experience and it’s learning curve and it really makes you stronger as a filmmaker in terms of your ability to navigate.”

She had previously explained to Jake Hamilton that she left the film’s post-production because everyone was on board with the vision of the film, “It was literally just that they moved the date of the film four different times and so instead of it being a two-year process, which I was deeply committed to, it became a three and a half year process. So every time the date moved – and they knew the entire time that I had an obligation, a greenlit movie with people who are waiting for me. And I pushed that and I pushed it again and then eventually we all knew if this pushes again I’m not going to be in LA to do the rest of this in person.”

“So we just figured out a way to do it remote. We figured out the best process and actually at the time that I left to go to London to start prepping on my next film everyone was so clear about what the film was what we wanted. So it really wasn’t that dramatic sort of thing that I think people are feeling it is,” DaCosta concluded.

As far as her claim that “everyone was trying to do the right thing” this is blatantly false, as DaCosta admitted back in 2023 that the film was intentionally being used to push feminism and DEI, objectively evil ideologies that is far from “right.”

DaCosta was asked during an appearance on Disney’s Good Morning America, “What’s really cool about this movie is the superheroes, women. You’re a woman. This is like a girl power moment. How has that been?”

She replied, “It was great. It’s really great. Like my Executive Producer Mary Livanos, my VFX Supervisor Tera DeMarco, my Production Designer, Costume Designer, all women. So exciting to– ’cause I know how important that is, that kind of representation. So it’s really exciting for us.”

“And then we put our heads down to do the work to get all those women onto the screen,” she added.

DaCosta also engaged in calumny against critics of the film calling them “virulent and violent and racist — and sexist and homophobic.”

She told Variety, “There are pockets where you go because you’re like, ‘I’m a super fan. I want to exist in the space of just adoration — which includes civilized critique.' Then there are pockets that are really virulent and violent and racist — and sexist and homophobic and all those awful things. And I choose the side of the light. That’s the part of fandom I’m most attracted to.”

The film bombed at the box office. It only grossed $46.1 million in its opening weekend at the domestic box office. It eventually grossed a total of just $84.5 million domestically and another $121.6 million international for a global gross of just $206.1 million. That is the worst performing film in the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe.

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