Rumors have been swirling about just how tough a shoot Captain America: Brave New World was. We all know about the extensive reshoots, up to the point Giancarlo Esposito’s Sidewinder was utterly absent prior to those reshoots. Naturally extensive reshoots upped the budget and required script reworkings, two factors which always increase behind-the-scenes tension. Then there is the Harrison Ford factor, with the rumor mill churning out a few suggestions that he had some conflicts with the crew. Those rumors have been dispelled by director Julius Onah, but there are some Marvel movies out there where behind-the-scenes drama, in its many forms, was very real and very much never dispelled.
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To be included here, the movie had to have drama during the production itself. Meaning, stuff like the X-Men Origins: Wolverine leak didn’t count because that happened during post-production. The same goes for Edgar Wright departing Ant-Man. But in that case, it was because his departure occurred before cameras started rolling. With those parameters in mind, onto our list.
Blade: Trinity
After the critical and commercial success of the first two films, the powers that be behind Blade: Trinity decided to give the film even more star power. But, considering Wesley Snipes was a major reason why those first two films were successes, he took issue with all of the sudden having to share his screen time and poster space with Jessica Biel and Ryan Reynolds.
According to just about everyone who was involved with the film, including Natasha Lyonne and Patton Oswalt, Snipes acted out on set and was combative with both his co-stars and director David S. Goyer. For instance, he often wouldn’t come out of his trailer, and, at one point, he wouldn’t even open his eyes for an operating table scene. It seems he and Reynolds patched things up for Deadpool & Wolverine, which even has a shout out to the tumultuous Trinity shoot.
Iron Man 2
Jon Favreau was every bit as responsible for Iron Man‘s great success (and meteoric rise up the pop culture appreciation scale) as Robert Downey Jr., and his relationship with Marvel is strong to this day, but Iron Man 2 was a tough shoot. Kevin Feige and other higher-ups knew that this film was the opportunity to start incorporating characters and plot points that would be fleshed out in The Avengers, but that meant script rewrites ended up being necessary.
What’s worse, the sequel was swiftly announced as soon as the first film took off, and its release date was set for just two years later. Toss in Mickey Rourke being unhappy with his character’s development being hacked to shreds and it was a film facing multiple hiccups getting to the finish line. Furthermore, depending on who you ask, Terrence Howard either wanted to be paid as much as Downey Jr., a demand that was rejected, or was let go because Favreau and others didn’t like his performance in the first film. Both scenarios are plausible.
Fantastic Four
A Marvel movie that will likely be fully ignored no matter how many multiverse movies the MCU cranks out, Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four (2015) is a disaster. The few elements that nearly work have a hard time standing out amongst the muck of ugly visuals, choppy editing, and a pace that makes one wonder just how much was cut out.
The film’s reshoots are fully apparent, especially when it comes to Kate Mara’s wig. It turns out they were also planned from the beginning, with the idea being that the finale would be shot during the reshoot period. It was a bizarre type of pressure to put on Trank, and according to many the stress got to him in a major way. Ultimately, the film was taken away from him, cobbled together, and released without any coherence.
[RELATED: The Fantastic Four Trailer from 2015 Promised an Epic Movie Marvel Fans Never Got]
Deadpool 2
There’s a reason T.J. Miller isn’t in Deadpool & Wolverine. For one, he has said his Deadpool and Deadpool 2 co-star Ryan Reynolds was “horrifically mean” to him on set. Two, Miller faced a number of legal issues, including assault, sexual assault, and making an emergency call about a fake bomb threat, between the years 2016 and 2018.
It seems Reynolds and Miller have patched things up, he and the assault victim reached an out of court settlement, and the charges regarding the bomb threat were dropped, but one still shouldn’t expect to see him in a fourth Deadpool film. What’s more, the first film’s director, Tim Miller, also clashed with Reynolds on the set of the first film, and he left the sequel, ultimately being replaced by Bullet Train‘s David Leitch.
Dark Phoenix
Dark Phoenix was another Marvel movie where an initial cut was turned in and test audiences didn’t care for certain elements and then reshoots were done to try and rectify the issue. Reshoots are fairly common for blockbusters, but in the case of Dark Phoenix they were extensive, including substantially altering the majority of its third act.
Reshoots also affected fellow X-Men movie The New Mutants. Like Dark Phoenix, that movie was delayed multiple times and ultimately landed in theaters with a thud. Though, in the case of The New Mutants, it hit theaters during the COVID era, so its financial flopping was far more understandable than the utter lack of interest in the $200 million June 2019 release of Dark Phoenix.
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The OA. Courtesy of Netflix.
