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When The Marvels became Marvel Studios’ lowest-grossing film at the time of its 2023 release, Disney pointed the finger to director Nia DaCosta. The film’s issue was lack of executive oversight, CEO Bob Iger went on record as saying. Unsurprisingly, to hear DaCosta tell it, the opposite was true. “They had a date, and they were prepping certain things, and you just have to lean into the process hardcore,” she recalls during a recent conversation at screenwriting festival Storyhouse (via Deadline). “The way they make those films is very different to the way, ideally, I would make a film, so you just have to lean into the process and hope for the best. The best didn’t happen this time but you kind of have to trust in the machine.”
If there’s one thing you can trust the machine to do, it’s grind you down and spit you out without a second look. (Like, really no second look: Brie Larson, Iman Vellani, and Teyonah Parris were all conspicuously absent from the Doomsday cast announcement.) Even before The Marvels had premiered, DaCosta (who had to promote the movie alone due to the actors strike) was put on the defensive as “sources” whispered to the press about extensive reshoots and the fact that DaCosta had to exit the post-production process to start on another movie. These stories were angled to make it look like DaCosta was at fault, and yet the necessity of shifting dates and doing reshoots always seemed like a problem that came down from on high.
Indeed, DaCosta—who was “a big comic book nerd growing up”—now says, “It was interesting because there was a certain point when I was like, ‘Okay, this isn’t going to be the movie that I pitched or even the first version of the movie that I shot,’ so I realised 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.”
Luckily, DaCosta has been able to navigate herself into some interesting projects after that experience, including the sequel to Danny Boyle’s classic apocalypse film 28 Years Later and the upcoming Hedda Gabler reimagining starring Tessa Thompson. In fact, the experience with Marvel motivated her to work on the latter: “I called my team, and I said that I need to make Hedda. I had written it years ago and I said that I really needed to go back to that because this isn’t fulfilling in the way I need it to be.” Marvel Studios continues to sound like a great place for filmmakers!
