The DC Connected Universe (The Batman 2 Delayed a Full Year to October 2026)

Even though it isn’t on the Warner Bros release calendar until June 23, 2023, The Flash is becoming Warner Bros Discovery CEO David Zaslav’s first movie crisis, because of the escalating coverage of incidents of volatile and odd behavior involving the film’s star, Ezra Miller.

Zaslav has made clear his desire to grow the DC Universe to MCU scale and has all the ingredients of a first foot forward in The Flash, including the return of Michael Keaton as Batman along with a reprise by Ben Affleck, a $200 million budget and a hot director in Andy Muschietti, who delivered the blockbuster It for the studio. The Warner Bros Discovery CEO exercised his well known penchant for micro-management by declining to greenlight Wonder Twins for being too niche. Zaslav will have to soon make a decision of what to do with the completed picture that is The Flash, and what to do with a young actor who appears to have serious off-set issues.

Deadline has heard the studio has tried getting help for Miller, but the troubling headlines continue to pile up. Could you send a potential liability on a global publicity tour and have the actor anchor a huge studio franchise play?

Zaslav has several choices and he will make one of them soon. Among them: He can pull back on heavily promoting the summer 2023 film, confining it to some P&A and no publicity tour. Or he can relegate it to streaming with HBO Max and take a write-down. Or lean in toward making the movie a hit and then drop Miller if they can’t straighten things out. Warner Bros did that when it dropped Johnny Depp from the Grindelwald character in the Fantastic Beasts franchise, after the actor’s well-publicized, unsuccessful UK lawsuit; the studio replaced Depp with Mads Mikkelsen.

“There is no winning in this for Warner Bros,” one studio source tells us. “This is an inherited problem for Zaslav. The hope is that the scandal will remain at a low level before the movie is released, and hope for the best to turn out.”

Sources said even if no more allegations surface, the studio won’t likely keep Miller in the Flash role in future DC films. That would mean replacing him in the future, but there is still a $200 million investment on the line with the first film and Warner Bros execs have to be cringing at each new press report.

There have been two more rounds of unflattering headlines just in the last two weeks for the 29-year old Miller, who identifies as nonbinary. The Daily Beast reported that there was a temporary harassment prevention order this week from a 12-year old and a mother in Greenfield, MA against the actor after Miller allegedly menaced the family and acted inappropriately toward the nonbinary child.

Last week, the parents of an 18-year-old named Tokata Iron Eyes filed paperwork asking a judge to issue an order of protection against the actor on behalf of their child, saying Miller groomed and brainwashed Tokata.

“Ezra uses violence, intimidation, threat of violence, fear, paranoia, delusions, and drugs to hold sway over a young adolescent Tokata,” read the filing, which was obtained by multiple outlets.

The 18-year-old’s parents allege the two met at Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota when their child was just 12. The parents allege Miller gave Tokata alcohol and drugs, flew the child to London and to places such as Vermont, New York, California and Hawaii. This past week Miller deleted his Instagram account in the face of the North Dakota tribal summons; the actor allegedly mocking authorities about their whereabouts.

Tokata posted a video on Instagram defending Miller.

“It’s nobody’s business and nobody is owed a story or outcome,” Tokata said in the two-minute video. “This is my life and these are my decision and I’m disappointed in my parents and the press — in every way.”

Prior to the recent news about Tokata’s parents’ allegations against Miller, the actor was arrested twice in Hawaii for a dust-up at a karaoke bar in March followed by an arrest for second-degree assault at a residence a month later, for allegedly throwing a chair at a woman at a private party Miller attended, cutting her forehead. During the first incident, the Hawaii Police Department Hilo Patrol reported that Miller became “agitated” when patrons began singing “Shallow” from A Star Is Born.

“Miller began yelling obscenities and at one point grabbed the microphone from a 23-year-old woman singing karaoke (disorderly conduct offense) and later lunged at a 32-year-old man playing darts (harassment offense). The bar owner asked Miller to calm down several times to no avail.” The actor was arrested, and charged on both offenses with bail set at $500. Bail was provided and Miller was released.

Two days later, the couple who lived with Miller at a hostel filed a restraining order against the actor after Miller returned home from the karaoke bar, and allegedly threatened to “bury” them. Miller reportedly stole the wife’s passport and husband’s wallet. By mid-April, the restraining order was dropped.

An even more disturbing incident happened in April 2020: A video went viral that appeared to show Miller choking a woman and throwing her to the ground at a bar in Reykjavik, Iceland, an incident that occurred after Miller was confronted by pushy fans. Miller was escorted out of the venue.

Born in Wyckoff, NJ, Miller’s career began to grow with a turn on Showtime’s Californication and playing a sociopathic murderous teen in the critically acclaimed Lynne Ramsay movie We Need To Talk About Kevin. Other notable credits followed in The Perks of Being a Wallflower and The Stanford Prison Experiment before Miller landed the role of The Flash in Zack Snyder’s Batman v. Superman. Miller, who displayed a sharp energy and humor, reprised in Justice League. Miller also worked with Warner Bros. in the Fantastic Beasts trilogy as Credence Barebone.

Warner Bros has so far declined to comment on Miller or where these mounting incidents will leave the studio and the actor’s future. Deadline has reached out to Miller’s legal reps and will update should they have any statements about the recent restraining orders against the actor.

Source: Deadline

UltimateMarvel wrote:OMG! You have to be fucking kidding me. I read what happens to Superman and Crisis. They have no idea what they're doing over there. And putting so much of it on Ezra was a huge mistake considering recent events.

Even with a recast, how do you make this work in a way that makes sense? They are in a hole they can't get out of.

WyldeMan wrote:Barry should have Flashpointed himself into Dylan O'Brien by the ending.

UltimateMarvel wrote:

WyldeMan wrote:Barry should have Flashpointed himself into Dylan O'Brien by the ending.

I'm liking this idea more with every news article that comes out.

Ezra Miller has been hosting a 25-year-old mother and her three young children at their Vermont farm, a living arrangement that worries the children’s father, as well as two others with knowledge of the situation, Rolling Stone has learned.

Two sources with knowledge of the situation expressed concern to Rolling Stone that it is an unsafe environment for children, alleging there are unattended guns strewn around the home on Miller’s 96-acre property. One source, who, like the other, requested anonymity for fear of retribution, recalled an instance where one of the children — a one-year-old — allegedly picked up a loose bullet and put it in her mouth.

But the mother who, like the father, Rolling Stone is not naming, claims that Miller had helped her escape from an “violent and abusive ex,” and Miller “helped me finally be able to have a safe environment for my three very young children.” (The father has denied all abuse allegations.)

“[Ezra’s] home ranch has been a healing haven for us,” she tells Rolling Stone. “They may have firearms for self-defense purposes and they are stored in a part of the house that the children never go in… My kids are able to relax more into their healing because of the safety and nurturing Ezra has been providing for them.”

The mother and children, aged one to five, have, as recently as this month according to local sources, been living at Miller’s Stamford, Vermont, farm since mid-April. The actor met the woman in Hilo, Hawaii, which Miller had been visiting in March. The embattled actor, who is set to star in Warner Bros.’ anticipated The Flash, racked up a string of arrests while in Hawaii, causing an emergency meeting with studio executives about their future with the franchise. (Miller is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns.)

In the midst of that unfolding crisis, the children’s father claims to Rolling Stone that Miller secured a flight out of Hawaii for the woman and her children, allegedly without the father’s knowledge. He claims he has not been able to see or speak with his children since their departure.

“I got a bad feeling in my stomach,” the father says. “I do want to go get my kids, they mean the fucking world to me.” (Representatives for Miller did not reply to a request for comment.)

The mother appears to still be living at Miller’s farm, according to pictures posted to her Instagram account as recently as Monday.

The two sources confirmed seeing children there with their mother, describing a chaotic environment that is unsafe for children. Video footage from April reviewed by Rolling Stone shows at least eight assault weapons, rifles, and handguns lying around the living room, with some weapons propped up next to a pile of stuffed animals.

The two sources also alleged that there has been frequent and heavy marijuana use in front of the children, with little concern about proper ventilation. Rolling Stone has also learned that there is a sizable cannabis farm on Miller’s property, with Miller’s close friend and purported “handyman” Whitney Suters claiming on social media that the two were running a cannabis company called Rebel Alliance Cannabis.

Numerous photos posted to Suters’ social media pages indicate there is a far greater number of marijuana plants than Vermont’s permitted two mature plants or four immature plants that private citizens can own. Suters told one Facebook friend there were at least 28 different strains growing for a fall 2021 harvest.

Miller’s farm is not among the state’s 25 licensed cultivators that are allowed to grow more than six plants and sell to wholesalers, Rolling Stone confirmed with Vermont’s Cannabis Control Board.

The father claims he had been trying to remove his children from the farm since April. After learning of the alleged weapons and drug use at Miller’s property in mid-May, he called Vermont’s Department for Children and Families (DCF) and local police to carry out wellness checks.

Rolling Stone has reviewed text messages between the father and a number registered to a Vermont social worker, who said in a text that they had visited the house on May 16 and the kids “looked good,” noting the worker had “more work to do.” It’s not clear if the social worker returned to the home. (In a request for comment, DCF said it does not provide information regarding visits to homes. Vermont State Police did not respond to requests for comment.)

It’s the latest concerning situation Miller has found themselves in after two sets of parents have reportedly sought protection and restraining orders against Miller, whose recent behavior has potentially put any future involvement with the superhero franchise in serious jeopardy.

Earlier this month, Chase Iron Eyes and Sara Jumping Eagle filed for an order of protection on behalf of their 18-year-old child Gibson, a well-known Standing Rock activist. (Gibson uses she/they pronouns.) The parents alleged to Rolling Stone that Miller had groomed Gibson, whom the actor had met when Gibson was 12, and earlier this year said Miller supplied Gibson with a high dose of LSD.

“If [they] were of [their] right mind and just making jacked-up decisions, I would be like, ‘OK, you have to learn the hard way,'” Gibson’s mother previously told Rolling Stone about her child. “But [they’re] not only having mental health issues, but there’s a predator taking advantage of [them] at the same time.”

However, Gibson released a statement of their own on Instagram claiming they had suffered “emotional and psychological manipulation” while living with their parents. In another video, Gibson called their parents’ concerns “blatantly insulting.”

On June 16, another parent secured a temporary restraining order against Miller on behalf of their 12-year-old child in Massachusetts, according to The Daily Beast. The order was granted by the Greenfield District Court “without advance notice because the Court determined that there is a substantial likelihood of immediate danger of harassment.”

During Miller’s Hawaii visit, the actor was arrested twice and at least 10 calls were placed to local police regarding their behavior. The first arrest stemmed from a disorderly conduct charge when Miller was set off by a couple at karaoke, singing “Shallow” from A Star Is Born on March 28.

Later that night, Miller allegedly entered a couple’s bedroom and threatened them, saying, “I will burn you and your slut wife,” according to the request for a temporary restraining order that the couple filed. Miller also allegedly stole a passport and wallet.

Miller was arrested again on April 19 after allegedly throwing a chair at a 26-year-old woman upon being asked to leave a private home, leaving the woman with a half-inch cut on her forehead.

Source: Rolling Stone

UltimateMarvel wrote:So many red flags, how could any of that be considered normal? Yeah, I'm sure they're planning something............any day now.

Comic-Con: ‘Game of Thrones,’ ‘Sandman’ In, Warners and DC Booth Out (Exclusive)

House of the Dragon, The Sandman and Harley Quinn will be showcased in a big way as Warner Bros. Discovery, still fresh from its merger, hits its first ever San Diego Comic-Con next month.

Yet the company, headed by CEO David Zaslav, is making big changes to its approach to Comic-Con as its various divisions make their first appearances at the annual pop culture celebration in three years, due to the pandemic. For the first time, Warners, including DC, will have no presence on the convention floor, a move that breaks with decades of precedent. The company had one of the bigger presences on the floor, with movie and TV costumes on display. In some years, A-list stars such as the cast of Justice League or Watchmen appeared for signings.

Another big change: Several CW series, including Flash, Superman & Lois and the upcoming Supernatural prequel, will be absent as the network is facing a possible sale and had canceled many of its shows.

Warner Bros. Discovery’s presence at Comic-Con is intended to reassure fans that the company still has them top of mind, even as the merger remakes executive ranks and aligns the company’s divisions — including HBO Max, Warner Bros. Pictures and DC — in a new direction.

As for what Warners’ theatrical division will bring, those plans are still being hashed out, according to multiple insiders. The studio has a number of DC films due out later this year, including DC League of Super-Pets, Black Adam and Shazam! Fury of the Gods, which open in July, October and December, respectively. These could all make appearances. Movies that are to open in 2023, such as The Flash and Blue Beetle, will not have panels, regardless of the presence, as they are considered too far out for any panel to have a meaningful impact.

But why focus on what’s not there when we can look at what will be?

House of the Dragon is one of HBO’s biggest bets and seeks to extend and reset the Game of Thrones franchise, which was the biggest show in HBO’s history. It will have a Hall H panel ahead of the series launch on Aug. 21.

Netflix’s Sandman is the most expensive DC show that Warner Bros. Television has ever made, and it’s getting the Hall H treatment with a special video presentation followed by a Q&A with series stars and producers.

Riverdale will also land in Hall H as the series makes its final Comic-Con appearance ahead of its sixth and final season on The CW.

DC publishing, despite not having a booth (which always attracted a crowd and had talent milling about), will still have a presence via a smattering of panels.

DC publisher and CCO Jim Lee will headline a showcase of upcoming DC books, with sneak peeks and creators. There will be a panel stacked with Batman-centric comic writers and artists, while superstar writers Tom Taylor and Tom King will have a conversation about their work, past, present and future. Also in the lineup is a panel on DC’s current event miniseries, Dark Crisis, among others.

Animation, for both young and older audiences, will also get presentations.

There will be panels on Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai with the new series’ voice stars and exec producers. Meanwhile, Cartoon Network will have a multishow panel touting Craig of the Creek, Teen Titans Go! and We Baby Bears, among several other animation panels.

Mature content animation will be spotlighted with panels on Adult Swim shows Smiling Friends, Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal (season two will be the focus for animation director Genndy Tartokovsky and art director Scott Willis), Rick and Morty: The Vindicators (a screening plus a Q&A) and Tuca & Bertie. And there will be a special screening of the first two episodes of surprise HBO Max hit Harley Quinn, as well as the premiere of animated feature Green Lantern: Beware My Power, followed by a Q&A.

Warner Bros. Games will have two panels, A Look Inside the Making of the Gotham Knights Game and Making a Mash-Up: MultiVersus.

And Warners’ wrestling unit, AEW, which has shows AEW: Dynamite and AEW: Rampage on TBS, will have two presentations that will see wrestlers descend on San Diego for the first time.

Insiders say the Comic-Con revamp is designed to make the company more strategic in its approach, but it also comes as Zaslav has been focusing on the bottom line, reportedly seeking $3 billion in savings for the new company. In past years, Comic-Con has cost Warners $25 million-plus — factoring in the floor installation, travel for its talent and tech costs for its high-level presentations. Still, Comic-Con, which runs July 21-24, remains a great marketing opportunity for a company whose content from its many divisions traffics in geek and genre fare.

Hollywood studios seem to be taking a cautious approach in returning to Comic-Con. The pandemic is still impacting plans — not all actors and filmmakers are eager to put themselves into a room with dozens or thousands of people — and companies such as Universal are sitting this year out. Marvel, on the other hand, is making a heralded return, a surprise move as the company will also have a big presence at D23, the Disney convention being held in early September.

It remains to be seen if Warners’ new plan will be the blueprint going forward or if it will reassess its steps yearly.

In the spring of 2020, as the COVID crisis was rapidly becoming a global pandemic, Ezra Miller began wearing out their welcome in Iceland.

The actor — best known for playing the DC superhero the Flash in several films for Warner Bros. — was set to start filming the studio’s latest entry in the “Harry Potter” franchise, “Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore,” in London when the shoot was halted on March 15, 2020, due to COVID. In the weeks after, Miller, who identifies as nonbinary and uses “they/them” pronouns, became a regular at bars in Iceland’s capital, Reykjavík, where locals came to know and even befriend them. Many recognized Miller from their earliest breakout movies, 2012’s “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” and 2011’s “We Need to Talk About Kevin,” where they played a troubled teen who brought a bow and arrow to school and murdered his classmates.

Miller, then 27, also started to show a different, volatile side to their personality — one that began to concern Icelanders.

“There was always something with Ezra,” said Carlos Reynir, then a bartender at Prikið Kaffihús, a pub located in the heart of Reykjavík.

Reynir said he intervened in two altercations at Prikið involving Miller. The first was a heated argument between Miller and a male patron that began as banter but ended in the actor putting the man in a chokehold and later slapping him. Reynir, who broke up the fight, says Miller later apologized, and the other patron quickly shrugged it off as a joke. The actor was allowed to continue frequenting the bar.

“We just brushed it off as two friends getting drunk and getting in a fight,” Reynir said. “It’s Iceland. That happens twice a weekend.”

But the next altercation, in which Miller assaulted a young woman at the bar, was harder to discount. The incident grabbed global headlines when footage of Miller placing the woman in a chokehold and then pushing her to the ground went viral online in early April 2020.

Soon after the incident, Variety spoke with the woman Miller assaulted; she recently confirmed that her comments could be printed for this article. She asked to remain anonymous out of concern for her privacy, as she’s telling her story publicly for the first time.

In the blurry video, Miller is seen confronting the woman — who is smiling and waving her arms as she walks toward them — and asking, “Do you want to fight? Is that what you do?” After Miller grabs her neck, she lets out an audible gasp. The person filming the video stopped to intervene, Variety has confirmed.

According to three sources, the woman had been speaking to Miller at the bar prior to the quarrel. She said she inquired about the actor’s feet — visible in flip-flops — after noticing some wounds, which Miller explained were battle scars from a fight. After discussing how they got them, she began to walk away, but turned around and joked, “But just so you know, I could take you in a fight.” Miller replied, “You really want to fight?” and the woman told them to meet her in the smoking area in two minutes.

Eventually, Miller confronted her outside the bar.

“I think it’s just fun and games — but then it wasn’t,” she said.

It’s a sentiment echoed by another woman, Nadia (she requested that only her first name be used, out of concern for her privacy), who alleges in an interview with Variety that after a warm, two-year friendship with Miller, mostly via text message, the actor came to her Berlin apartment late one evening in February 2022 at her invitation. They hadn’t seen each other since they had a consensual sexual encounter in 2020. But after a friendly interaction, Miller’s mood sharply turned when she told them that they couldn’t smoke inside her home.

“That just set them off,” Nadia said. “I asked them to leave about 20 times, maybe more. They started insulting me. I’m a ‘transphobic piece of shit.’ I’m a ‘Nazi.’ It became so, so stressful for me. They were going around my house, looking at everything, touching everything, spreading tobacco leaves on the floor. It felt disgusting and very intrusive.”

After roughly a half-hour of pleading, Nadia said she finally convinced Miller to leave once she called the police. The incident left her deeply disturbed. While she is clear that she never felt at risk of sexual assault that night in her apartment, she believed the actor “could somehow attack me physically.”

“I totally felt unsafe,” she said.

Five people — two friends, a women’s rights advocate, a German social worker, and Nadia’s German lawyer — told Variety that they spoke with Nadia soon after her alleged encounter with Miller and corroborated her account. In April, Nadia filed a criminal complaint about her experience, which Variety has confirmed with the German State Prosecutor’s Office in Berlin. While the prosecutor was investigating a charge of trespassing against Miller, their office says that it has discontinued its proceedings since the actor is no longer in Germany.

Just over a month after her alleged encounter with Miller, Nadia saw news reports that the actor had been arrested half a world away in Hawaii, for disorderly conduct and harassment, after another turbulent incident at a bar. In May, TMZ released body-cam video of Miller’s arrest in Hawaii, in which the actor records much of the encounter for, they say, “NFT crypto art.” In the video, they also say a patron at a bar “declared himself as a Nazi,” and accused a police officer of touching their penis during a search.

Nadia realized she wasn’t alone in her experience with the actor. “It seems to be a pattern,” she said. “They jet-set abuse.”

That alleged pattern has only grown more alarming. After a second arrest in Hawaii in April, this time for second-degree assault after allegedly throwing a chair at a woman and leaving her with a cut on her forehead, the actor additionally has had two protection orders placed against them. The first, as reported by the Los Angeles Times, was by parents of a now-18-year-old from the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North and South Dakota, who claim Miller manipulated their daughter when she was between the ages of 12 and 18. The second was by parents of a current 12-year-old in Massachusetts that involves an incident that occurred just days before their alleged confrontation with Nadia in Berlin.

In a story about the latter incident, The Daily Beast reported that Miller allegedly got into an aggressive confrontation with the Greenfield, Mass., family over the mother’s casual reference to “her tribe” and Miller’s claim that the board game Parcheesi appropriates Rastafarian culture. At one point, Miller allegedly revealed a gun and said to a family member, “Talking like that could get you into a really serious situation.”

In June, a Rolling Stone story alleged that Miller has been housing a mother and her three young children at their Vermont farm amid unsafe living conditions, with unsecured guns scattered around the expansive property. (The mother told Rolling Stone that Miller helped her escape an abusive marriage.)

As for Miller’s future as a movie star, it’s unclear whether they will continue to perform as the Scarlet Speedster in future projects, but Warner Bros. is still committed to releasing its $200 million-budgeted tentpole “The Flash” in theaters in June 2023. According to sources with knowledge of the project, the film simply costs too much for the studio to scrap entirely and reshooting with a new actor in Miller’s role is similarly cost-prohibitive, because the actor is in virtually every scene. Also, the film likely can’t generate the revenues needed to turn a profit without a robust theatrical run, so putting the movie directly on HBO Max is also unlikely. All eyes are on Warner Bros., however, as to how it continues to navigate the choppy waters surrounding Miller. The studio already had to downplay the actor’s involvement in “Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore,” which opened in theaters in April.

Representatives for Miller had no comment. A source close to the situation tells Variety that Miller hopes to address the allegations at some point, but they have chosen to privately focus on their health and healing over the coming months.

When Miller started showing up at Prikið Kaffihús in Reykjavík, their unusual behavior was at first chalked up to the eccentric whims of a visiting celebrity.

“If they weren’t lighting incense or candles, or even bringing in their own Bluetooth speaker and playing it super loud to overpower our music, there was always something,” Reynir, the bartender at Prikið, said. “We’d approach them and say, ‘Hey, do you mind? There are other people here.’ It was a bit of a chuckle. And then they would go, ‘Yeah, sure,’ and they’d stop, only to continue it a little bit later.”

The day Miller assaulted the woman at Prikið in April 2020, her initial interactions with them felt at first to be in a similarly barbed-yet-easygoing vein. When she told Miller to meet her in the smoking area, she said she meant it as “a joke” — and it appeared that Miller took it as one when they remained inside.

But then a friend of the woman approached Miller and told them that he’d heard the actor didn’t want to fight. “My friend didn’t have to say that,” the woman allowed. “It was just a joke, obviously — but [Miller] took that literally and got super mad and came running outside.” That’s when one of the woman’s friends started recording.

“I think it’s just fun and games — but then it wasn’t,” she said. “All of a sudden, [they’re] on top of me, choking me, still screaming in my face if I want to fight. My friend who’s filming sees [they’re] obviously not joking and it’s actually serious, so he stops filming, and pushes [them] off me as [they’re] still trying to fight me. Two guy friends of mine are actually holding [Miller] back as [they’re] screaming, ‘This is what you wanted! This is what you wanted!’” (At the time of the interview, it was unclear whether the woman was aware Miller identifies as nonbinary.)

The woman said Miller spat in her friend’s face “multiple times” — an affront that was dangerous in the early, pre-vaccine days of the pandemic. (Variety in 2020 confirmed Miller’s actions with her friend, who also wished to remain anonymous.) Eventually, she said, a bartender — Reynir — ran outside to break up the fight.

Reynir had arrived early for his shift that day and had seen the woman in the smoking area with her friends and Miller. When he saw the situation “going way out of hand,” he decided to get involved.

“[Miller] grabs me by the throat as I’m trying to usher them out the [back] door and tells me they’re not leaving,” Reynir said. He added that Miller repeatedly claimed that the woman’s friends had pushed them. “Which they didn’t,” the bartender said.

“They proceeded to spit in my face several times, so with the final push I closed and locked the door,” he added.

Reynir then ran to lock the tavern’s front entrance, where Miller, who had run along the perimeter of the building, was banging on the door and screaming to be let in. Eventually, the actor was ushered into a car by two local friends and driven away. Variety has corroborated Reynir’s account with three other sources, including management at Prikið.

The woman reported the incident to the police — the report was confirmed by Variety — but didn’t press charges. Reynir was allowed to finish work early and took a COVID PCR test the next morning, which came back negative, he said.

“I do believe the incident at the bar was what ruined [Miller’s] reputation thoroughly in Iceland,” Reynir said. “They stopped coming to other bars shortly after.”

Reynir, who left Prikið recently and now works at a Chinese restaurant, was struck by how quickly Miller turned against the local community, leaving a trail of destruction in their path.

“I thought they were great to begin with. We talked about all kinds of spiritual things and went deep into philosophy,” said Reynir. “They had this wonderful mask on as this total sweetheart with a completely open mind, who’s ready to help and talk to anyone. But as soon as someone does something they don’t agree with or doesn’t like, it’s their fault, not [Ezra’s].”

The day the video of Miller choking the woman in Iceland went viral, Nadia saw it on her Twitter feed. She called them immediately.

“Ezra was in Iceland in a car with a friend,” Nadia said. “I could hear the friend or maybe friends, I don’t know, laughing, and Ezra was in a very good mood. Ezra was like, ‘Don’t worry. It’s just a misunderstanding. It’s nothing. Nothing happened.’”

At the time, Nadia had known Miller for just a few months, but she felt she had no reason to doubt them. “In the video, it’s true that the girl is smiling, so I thought, ‘OK, I guess it was taken out of context and they were just playing around,’” she said. “I just let it go.”

Nadia met Miller in January 2020 at an art opening in Los Angeles — she was visiting from Germany — when Miller approached her and a friend outside and struck up a conversation. While she works in the music world, Nadia was unfamiliar with Miller’s career and didn’t recognize them.

“They said they were a performer,” she said. “My friend kept on saying, ‘It’s Ezra Miller!’ And I kept on asking my friend, ‘Who’s Ezra Miller?’”

She liked that Miller was interested in discussing “society” and “spiritual things” rather than talking about the film industry or pop culture. “It was refreshing,” she said. So, as she was leaving the opening, Nadia asked Miller to exchange numbers.

About five minutes into the car ride back to her hotel, Nadia said she started receiving “pretty adult, X-rated” text messages from Miller suggesting the two hook up. “Which, by the way, was totally fine — there was nothing abusive about it. I’m just not into texting like this,” she said. “I told them to stop, and they stopped on the spot.”

The two kept texting, and on Miller’s last night in L.A., they spent the night together. “They were super caring, super nice,” she said. “I had no reason to suspect anything bad was ever going to happen with them.” (Nadia said she could not share the texts with Variety out of concern it would violate German privacy laws.)

Over the next two years, Nadia said she and Miller continued to text each other, but every attempt to meet again in person was thwarted either by their schedules, the pandemic or both. After plans to spend Christmas 2021 together in London were foiled when Nadia’s flight was canceled three times, she began to worry about the strength of her connection with Miller.

“They’d been super nice to me, and I didn’t feel good to not show up and to refuse the invitations,” she said. “I thought maybe I’ve lost a friend because we’ve missed each other so many times.”

So, with the Berlinale approaching in February 2022, she invited Miller to visit her should they be in the city for the annual film festival. The actor had recently wrapped filming on “The Flash,” and “The Secrets of Dumbledore” wasn’t opening for another two months, so they had nothing to promote in Berlin. But one night during the festival, Nadia got a text from the actor at nearly 4 a.m.

“I received a message, like, ‘Hey, I’ve arrived in Berlin, but I might have to go tomorrow,’” she said. Miller hadn’t lined up a hotel, she said, so with the city shut down amid the omicron surge and the weather near freezing outside, she invited Miller to her apartment.

“When they arrived, they were super nice, super polite, asking me if they could come in,” she recalled. “When I said my house is shoes off, they had no problem taking their shoes off.”

They talked. She gave them tea and vegetable soup. Then Miller began to roll a cigarette.

“I was like, ‘Yeah, you need to smoke this outside or on the balcony. There’s no smoking in my house,’” she said.

Miller kept rolling their cigarette. Nadia insisted they smoke outside. Instantly, their demeanor changed.

“And this I’m quoting word for word,” she said. “They started with ‘I’m a maker of planets. Tobacco is sacred.’” Miller continued on a “tirade,” she said, that they could do “whatever they want whenever they want, basically.” When Nadia stood up to insist that guests should honor their host’s house rules, “they looked at me with this really mean, stern face, and told me, ‘Sit down,’ like they were ordering a dog.” Nadia told Miller as much. Their reply, she said, was “Yes, I’m talking to you like a dog.”

“I said, ‘OK, if you talk to me like this, it’s time for you to go,’” she said.

But Miller didn’t. Instead, they escalated, accusing Nadia of being “transphobic” and a “Nazi.”

“I asked them if they remember I told them I’m a descendant of Holocaust survivors, so why would they say that to me?” she said. “They answered, screaming at me, ‘Yes, but how many people of my family died?’ Because many people in their family died. I was like, Oh, OK, this is a game of who’s got the most trauma.”

So, Nadia disengaged. “The only thing I said to them was ‘Leave my house. Go away. Go away. Leave. Can you leave now?’” she said. “Like a broken record.”

Miller persisted, stalking her apartment. “I told them I was calling the police because they were refusing to leave,” she said. “And while I was calling the police, Ezra was calling the police — or pretending to call the police. I don’t know.”

Miller entered Nadia’s bedroom, and when she told them to leave, “they started to shout that they were a rape survivor and I was triggering them,” she said. “They started to say I had assaulted them. I had beat them up. I had hurt them.”

Finally, Nadia was able to block Miller near the entrance to her apartment with her body, and said out loud that she was surprised the police hadn’t arrived yet. Miller finally gathered their things and left. Nadia called the police to tell them not to bother coming, put her cellphone and door buzzer on silent and set about cleaning up her apartment.

“I thought it was over, but it was not,” she said.

About 30 minutes later, at nearly 6 a.m., Nadia heard a loud banging noise at the front door of her apartment building. When she looked outside, she could see Miller at the door seemingly attempting to break it down, and said they were screaming that Nadia had stolen their passport and money. She then discovered Miller had left behind a second jacket in her apartment, which did contain Miller’s passport and credit card. She threw down the jacket to Miller from her balcony and went back inside. At that point Nadia realized Miller had texted her just minutes earlier, but she said she didn’t see the texts until days later, when she reviewed them with a social worker. (The social worker confirmed seeing the texts with Nadia to Variety.)

It was an alarming exclamation point on what had already been a frightening experience. “I did not feel safe,” Nadia said.

All five sources who corroborated Nadia’s account with Variety said they spoke with her very soon after — in one case, the day after — her alleged encounter with Miller. Only Nadia’s lawyer could recall Nadia telling him that Miller had declared that they were a “maker of planets” and that “tobacco is sacred.” All the sources were deeply troubled by what Nadia related to them about her alleged experience.

“I was worried,” said one of Nadia’s friends. “I think she was misled — she had a memory of them from when they had time in L.A., and what she got [in Berlin] was really different. It sounded dangerous.”

Nadia said she has not seen Miller since that night, and she blocked their number on her phone. But she was deeply shaken. “One of the reasons I did not feel safe is after they left, I Googled Ezra to see maybe something is going on with them,” she said. “And I saw a report in the press that they made some sort of death threats to KKK members via Instagram.”

On Jan. 27, the actor posted a message on video “for the Beulaville chapter of the North Carolina Ku Klux Klan.”

“Look, if y’all want to die, I suggest just killing yourselves with your own guns, okay?” Miller continued in the video. (The actor has since deactivated that Instagram account.) “Otherwise, keep doing exactly what you’re doing right now — and you know what I am talking about — and then, you know, we’ll do it for you if that’s really what you want.”

Miller had repeatedly called Nadia a Nazi in her own home. They knew where she lived and had tried to break down her apartment building door. What was to stop them from posting about her?

“And then I have fans at my door wanting to beat me up,” she said.

After speaking with the social worker about her options, Nadia realized that a way to defend against any reprisal from Miller was to share her experience with a journalist. She reached out to a women’s rights advocate while seeking guidance on how to proceed; that source, who also corroborated Nadia’s account, put her in touch with Variety.

For the Icelandic bartender Reynir, the international attention following Miller’s behavior in 2020 rocked his city, which despite being accustomed to Hollywood actors coming through town as part of Iceland’s booming production scene, is less familiar with the global appeal of celebrity drama. The incident, Reynir said, brought him close to the others involved, but “thanks to an Icelandic upbringing, we’re rather quick at letting things like this go.”

Prikið saw Miller just once more after the incident with the woman. Both Reynir and his former manager said the actor came to the bar with the gift of a stuffed toy elephant, intended as a peace offering and still kicking around “somewhere” in the bar. They haven’t seen Miller since.

Two years later, however, following the new string of headlines about Miller, the actor is once again a topic of conversation in Reykjavík.

“To this day, if I see Ezra Miller, I’ll look the other way and keep walking, but I still wish them the best. I don’t want this to be their life,” Reynir said. “I want them to stop going through the celebrity craziness that they’re going through and be happy. Even though they did all this shit to me and my friends, they’re still a person that deserves good things, but not if they continue acting the way that they have. You get what you give.”

Nadia is less forgiving of Miller’s behavior, but also a bit less concerned about any reprisal from the actor since they’re facing so many other allegations and legal battles. “They’re probably not thinking about me anymore because I’m just one of many people they abused,” she said.

Source: Ezra Miller Accused of Harassing Woman in Germany, and Iceland Choking Victim Breaks Her Silence (EXCLUSIVE)

UltimateMarvel wrote:In which universe? He looks a little young. He'd be a good fit in Pattinson's universe.

Zack Snyder was becoming increasingly agitated. Over the course of several weeks in the spring of 2020, the director repeatedly demanded that the names of two producers – Geoff Johns and Jon Berg – be removed from his upcoming re-cut of Justice League, the DC superhero movie that had tanked back in 2017. His high-powered CAA agent began calling Warner Bros. daily to check on why the pair hadn’t been excised from the list of credits. Simultaneously, Snyder’s wife Deborah, another producer on the film, started pressing an executive in the studio’s story department with the same directive. (Snyder admits the couple “asked the studio” to intervene after “a personal plea” to Johns and Berg was ignored.) On June 26, 2020, Snyder had had enough. According to multiple sources familiar with the matter, Snyder confronted an executive in the studio’s postproduction department and issued a threat: “Geoff and Jon are dragging their feet on taking their names off my cut. Now, I will destroy them on social media.”

A toxic social media movement had already been building around the director since at least 2018, spiking with online cries for Warner Bros. to #ReleaseTheSnyderCut of Justice League two years later. As Snyder’s demands escalated behind the scenes — including for more money to finish his four-hour director’s cut of the film for HBO Max and access to intellectual property — so did a flood of attacks aimed at Warner Bros.: calls for boycotts, demands for some executives to be fired, even death threats against them. Fans went after anyone or anything deemed a danger to the so-called SnyderVerse, including directors like Adam Wingard (whose Godzilla vs. Kong launched on HBO Max 13 days after Snyder Cut and stole some of its thunder) and movies like Wonder Woman 1984 (on which Johns was a writer). The onslaught included cyber harassment so severe Warner Bros. security division got involved. (A Warner Bros. Discovery spokesperson declined to comment, “as this matter predates the current leadership and new company.”)

And as the mayhem built, many insiders questioned how organic the SnyderVerse legion really was. According to two reports commissioned by WarnerMedia and recently obtained by Rolling Stone, at least 13 percent of the accounts that took part in the conversation about the Snyder Cut were deemed fake, well above the three to five percent that cyber experts say they typically see on any trending topic. (In public filings, Twitter has estimated that the percentage of daily active accounts on its platform that are “false or spam” is less than five percent.) So while Snyder had scores of authentic, flesh-and-blood fans, those real stans were amplified by a disproportionate number of bogus accounts.    

Two firms contacted by Rolling Stone that track the authenticity of social media campaigns, Q5id and Graphika, also spotted inauthentic activity coming from the SnyderVerse community. And yet another firm, Alethea Group, found that the forsnydercut.com domain — which claims to have made the #ReleaseTheSnyderCut hashtag go viral in May of 2018, and became the landing hub for efforts to bring Snyder back to the helm of the DC universe — was, at least at one point, registered to a person who also ran a now-defunct ad agency which promoted its ability to bring “cheap, instant Avatar traffic to your website.”

Rolling Stone spoke with more than 20 people involved with both the original Justice League and Snyder’s cut, most of whom believe that the director was working to manipulate the ongoing campaign. Snyder claims that, “if anyone” was pulling strings on the social media fervor, it was Warner Bros. “trying to leverage my fan base to bolster subscribers to their new streaming service.” But one source maintains, “Zack was like a Lex Luthor wreaking havoc.”

For a time, rival studios and digital marketing executives were intrigued by the SnyderVerse fan mobilization, wondering how they, too, might better harness the power of social media. But soon many came to question what appeared to be suspect activity: Hashtags like #ReleaseTheSnyderCut saturated social media beginning in late 2019, racking up hundreds of thousands of tweets a day to pressure Warner Bros. to release the director’s version of the film. And when the studio finally released Synder’s new cut in March 2021, #RestoreTheSnyderVerse, a fledgling fan hashtag calling for Warner Bros. to greenlight more of Snyder’s DC films, racked up more than a million tweets in one day.

“Just look at the drop: [That hashtag was] trending at a million tweets a day for when they wanted to release the Snyder Cut. And it dropped down to 40,000 within days,” says one digital marketing executive, who claims the phenomenon became the talk of Hollywood. “You don’t see a drop like that organically.” Instead, the executive says, it appears to be a classic example of “weaponizing a movement.”

In mid-January 2021, three months before the Snyder Cut of Justice League was finally released, an Instagram account with the handle @daniras_ilust posted a gruesome image depicting the decapitated heads of Johns, DC Films president Walter Hamada, and former Warner Bros. Pictures Group chairman Toby Emmerich. The image rapidly circulated among the fandom, with SnyderVerse devotees even tagging social media accounts of some of the children of the trio. It was alarming posts like these that prompted WarnerMedia, concerned about the safety of its employees, to take the unusual step of quietly commissioning a series of reports from a third-party cybersecurity firm to analyze the trolling.

The reports had taken on a mythic status within Warner Bros. Some doubted they even existed. But a small group at the parent company did have access to them. The main report, dated April 2021 and titled “SnyderCut
Social Media Presence,” offers a chilling glimpse inside the powerful movement.

“After researching online conversations about the Snyder Cut of the Justice League‘s release, specifically the hashtags ‘ReleaseTheSnyderCut’ and ‘RestoreTheSnyderVerse’ on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, [the analysts] detected an increase in negative activity created by both real and fake authors,” the report concluded. “One identified community was made up of real and fake authors that spread negative content about WarnerMedia for not restoring the ‘SnyderVerse.’ Additionally, three main leaders were identified within the authors scanned on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram — one leader on each platform. These leaders received the highest amount of engagement and have many followers, which gives them the ability to influence public opinion.” Furthermore, the report stated, many authors were spreading “harmful content” about then-Warner Bros. chairman Ann Sarnoff (who had called the fan trolling “reprehensible” in an interview with Variety), “with the majority of authors calling her a liar for the claim that there is no Snyder Cut of the movie and called for Warner Media to fire her. These authors also started using the hashtag ‘BoycottWarnerBros.’” Another internal report found an active sub-community that was attacking Johns.

Rolling Stone asked three other cybersecurity and social media intelligence firms, including Q5id, to crunch SnyderVerse-related data from the months leading up to the Snyder Cut’s 2021 release, looking for indications of inauthentic social media activity. (Such activity could take a number of forms, including attempts to manipulate discourse involving human-operated networks of inauthentic accounts; or the use of software to automate account posting and engagement activity, often referred to as “bots.”) Q5id chief information officer and chief technology officer Becky Wanta says her firm’s analysis indicates “there’s no question that bots were involved.”

Wanta explains: “There are certain patterns that bots give off that we saw here. They arrive at almost the same time in huge numbers. And many times the origin of thousands or even millions of messages can be traced to a single source or two. Sometimes, they can be traced to unusual servers in remote countries. And their content will be precisely similar.”

That means a fandom amplified by fake accounts helped shake down a major studio — at an ultimate cost to Warner Bros. of more than $100 million — to re-release a movie that had already bombed years earlier.

The campaign didn’t end with the March 18, 2021, release of the Snyder Cut. The Wrap reported in May that bots may have factored into Snyder winning two fan-favorite awards at this year’s Oscars. And according to the social media firm Graphika, the pattern of a mostly organic social media fan frenzy augmented by a small number of inauthentic accounts is still playing out. “We see clear signs of coordinated online activity from May and June this year, when multiple communities pushed hashtags promoting Zack Snyder and deriding Warner Bros.,” Avneesh Chandra, a data analyst at Graphika, tells Rolling Stone. As examples, Graphika points to accounts that seemed to exist only to barrage Twitter and the replies of WarnerMedia social media accounts with constant pro-Snyder hashtags.

Chandra downplays the effectiveness of that inauthentic activity, noting that “many of those accounts are spammy and failed to cut through the noise,” but he says it’s clear there is some manipulation occuring. “The bulk of this activity was made up of real and passionate users taking direction from influential figures in the pro-Snyder community,” Chandra says. “We regularly see these types of adversarial social media campaigns that are driven by real people coordinating online. When you kick the hornet’s nest of a large, engaged, and confrontational fan community, that can be just as, if not more, scary as facing down an army of fake accounts.”

Every superhero tale needs an origin story. And the groundwork for the SnyderVerse siege had been laid well before 2020. While Snyder denies it, one source tells Rolling Stone the director hired a digital marketing firm to juice fan engagement back in 2016, when his $250 million film Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice was savaged by critics (earning a dismal 29-percent RottenTomatoes rating) and disappointed Warner Bros. brass at the box office, as well as the DC fan base. (The movie took in $874 million worldwide; a DC stand-alone film like 2019’s Joker, by comparison, cost $70 million and earned $1.074 billion worldwide.) Nevertheless, the Snyder army was coalescing.

On February 27, 2017, Snyder showed his first cut of the much-anticipated Justice League — intended to be DC’s answer to Marvel’s all-star superhero juggernaut The Avengers, which had earned $1.519 billion worldwide five years earlier and was directed by Joss Whedon. Executives at the studio, headed up at the time by former chief Kevin Tsujihara, felt the film had major issues, including that it was convoluted and still too long at more than two-and-a-half hours. The movie was deemed “a disaster” and “full-on failure” by those in the room, and, as a result, the studio pivoted and enlisted Whedon to come on as a writer and consultant, according to multiple knowledgeable sources.

It was a humiliating turn for Snyder, who had once been entrusted with creating the architecture for the DC universe and its slate of films, including Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and the upcoming The Flash. Nine days later, Snyder presented another cut to a smaller group. It was still well over two hours. Whedon gave notes on that cut; some say Snyder wasn’t receptive. Then, in mid-March of 2017, Snyder, a father of eight, endured an unthinkable tragedy when his 20-year-old daughter died. Still, he continued working to cut down the film, while the studio had Whedon operating on a separate track to lighten its dark, superserious tone.

On May 5, 2017, Snyder screened his final version of Justice League on the Burbank lot for all of the studio’s department heads. It clocked in at two hours and 18 minutes. One source familiar with that cut called it “unwatchable” and “joyless.” Meanwhile, Whedon, the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, was prepping to direct reshoots in the summer so that the film could make its November 2017 release date. None of the backstage drama surrounding Whedon’s hiring had surfaced in the press at the time.

Two and a half weeks later, on May 22, 2017, Snyder announced the news of his daughter’s death and his exit from Justice League. His wife Deborah also said she was taking a break to focus on healing. “In the last two months, I’ve come to the realization … I’ve decided to take a step back from the movie to be with my family, be with my kids, who really need me,” Zack Snyder told The Hollywood Reporter. “They are all having a hard time. I’m having a hard time.”

Warner Bros. released Justice League, with its star-laden cast of Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, and Gal Gadot, on Nov. 17, 2017, and it was quickly proclaimed a disaster. Critics bristled at the schizophrenic result, a mash-up of Snyder’s brooding, violent, R-rated version poking through Whedon’s campy, PG-13 incarnation. The film’s $658 million global haul was an embarrassment given its $300 million budget. (By contrast, the DC stand-alone Wonder Woman made $165 million more than Justice League but with half the budget that same year.)

Though Snyder had created the architecture for the entire DC Universe — he is responsible for casting Affleck (Batman), Gadot (Wonder Woman), Ezra Miller (Flash), Jason Momoa (Aquaman), Ray Fisher (Cyborg), and Amber Heard (Mera) — and was a producer on various stand-alone and spinoff films like 2016’s Suicide Squad, he was now on the outside. The studio was looking to take the universe in a different direction and was making plans to replace Affleck and Cavill.

Around this time, sources say, Snyder sent one of his editors to the studio to retrieve hard drives that contained materials for Justice League. Snyder was asked to return them, considering they were studio property. He balked. (Snyder says he was contractually entitled to files connected with the film, that the materials were for “my personal use” and that he was not asked to return them at that time.) Security was notified, sources say, but no action was taken. No one expected Snyder to begin tinkering with an alternate cut of the film.

But a new force was rising: the SnyderVerse army. Forsnydercut.com, one of the loudest and most influential voices in online Snyder fandom, made its debut in late December 2017, and, according to both the site and the main report commissioned by WarnerMedia, played an influential role in making the Twitter hashtag #ReleaseTheSnyderCut go viral.

It’s unclear who, precisely, is behind the site. Four participants are listed there as its developers, including a self-identified fan and site founder who purports to be from China named Fiona Zheng. The site was originally registered using a privacy service in December 2017, but web registration records show that, during a brief lapse in the privacy protection from mid March to mid-October 2021, a digital marketing consultant named Xavier Lannes was listed as the registrant of forsnydercut.com. The social media analytics firm Alethea tells Rolling Stone that it is highly unlikely that ownership changed hands before or after that period.

A LinkedIn account for Lannes, who is not mentioned on forsnydercut.com, identifies him as the CEO of a Los Angeles-based digital ad firm called MyAdGency. The website MyAdGency.com is no longer active, but an archived version of the site touted such services as bringing “cheap, instant Avatar traffic to your website.” The agency boasted: “We use the latest technology concentrated in the palm of your customer’s hands to grow your business beyond your wildest dreams!” Snyder denies knowing or ever hiring Lannes; Lannes did not respond to a request for comment. Zheng, meanwhile, despite prolific tweeting about Snyder from 2016 up until the day of the Snyder Cut’s release in 2021, has posted just twice since then. A query to Zheng went unanswered.

Over the two years following Justice League’s disappointing bow, Warner Bros. faced changes. In June 2018, AT&T closed an $85 billion deal to acquire the Time Warner media empire, whose sprawling assets included CNN and HBO. The following year, Tsujihara resigned following a Hollywood Reporter exposé about his apparent efforts to secure roles for an aspiring actress with whom he had a sexual relationship. Sarnoff replaced him.

All the while, the Snyder fandom continued to call for the studio to greenlight a Snyder version of Justice League, launching a Change.org petition and mobilizing the hashtag #ReleaseTheSnyderCut. Executives who didn’t fall in line faced a social media beating. Former DC Entertainment president Diane Nelson deleted her Twitter account in September 2018 after SndyerVerse adherents targeted her for merely praising Todd Phillips’ Joker, a film that exists outside the Snyder canon.

Pricey publicity stunts ensued, like a towering Times Square ad — which can cost more than $50,000 per day — and a plane flying over Comic Con with a banner calling for DC to release the Snyder Cut. None of the press reports at the time addressed who was footing the bill. “Where was the fundraiser? Why didn’t we ever see a Kickstarter campaign from the fans?” asks one insider who became skeptical of the grassroots nature of the SnyderVerse movement, considering the cost of such marketing endeavors.

Whatever role he may or may not have played in the Snyder Cut publicity blitz, at the close of 2019, Snyder sent his disciples into overdrive when he posted a picture of a set of film canisters labeled “JL Director’s Cut Running Time 214 [minutes].” Running over the picture were the words: “Is it real? Does it exist? Of course it does.” One insider scoffed at the post: “He refused to return the hard drives, which were studio property. This was just more orchestrated bullshit from Zack.”

The fandom — which has been dubbed “toxic” by such outlets as Vanity Fair and Vox, with the latter noting it “has far more in common with abusive right-wing campaigns like Gamergate than with most of mainstream geek culture” — continued to push, and Snyder began negotiations with Warner Bros. on a Justice League redo in January 2020. The plan was to release his cut on the in-development HBO Max streaming platform. Sources say the director insisted that no new footage would be needed. After Snyder screened the 214-minute version at his home right before the March 2020 Covid lockdown, HBO Max executive Bob Greenblatt greenlit the project, a move signed off on by new WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar. The company officially announced the film on May 20, 2020, with Greenblatt noting, “Since I got here 14 months ago, the chant to #ReleaseTheSnyderCut has been a daily drumbeat in our offices and inboxes. Well, the fans have asked, and we are thrilled to finally deliver.” (Silicon Valley transplant Kilar had raised eyebrows internally when he initially floated the unconventional idea of announcing Snyder Cut from his own Twitter account and having the director flown to Dallas to address the AT&T board. Some became even more concerned when the CEO, who was publicly bantering with Snyder on Twitter, was told that Snyder was in possession of studio property, and, they say, he simply shrugged it off. Kilar says he “never had the remotest thought” to fly Snyder to Texas to address the board, and says he “would never” shrug off someone having studio property.)

Still, Snyder wasn’t satisfied, as Johns and Berg’s names remained on the project as of summer 2020. Sources say the director blamed the pair for his losing control of the DC universe when they replaced him to run the portfolio of superhero films back in 2016. Then, after four months of a fan siege targeting Johns and Berg, they were quietly removed from the credits. (Snyder notes that neither he nor his wife have “have ever said anything negative about Geoff Johns or Jon Berg on social media or in interviews,” and says they wanted the pair’s names removed from the credits because “this was not the movie they believed in, developed, or helped us to get made.”) Around the same time, Kilar agreed to give Snyder $60 million for postproduction and special effects work. That figure marked a significant bump from initial reports that pegged finishing costs at $20-$30 million.

What the studio didn’t know at the time was that Snyder had already shot footage in his backyard at the height of the pandemic. Sources say the rogue shoot flouted Covid protocols and union guidelines. (Snyder acknowledges two shoots were done in his backyard during the pandemic, insisting that both adhered to Covid protocols, and noting that one shoot was authorized by Warner Bros.) Furthermore, they say Snyder wanted an additional $13 million to cover additional production costs. Sarnoff pushed back, as extra footage wasn’t part of the deal.

Meanwhile, the Snyder controversy had begun spinning in new directions. Fisher, an actor who Snyder had plucked from obscurity to play Cyborg in Synder’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, started speaking out against Whedon, the director who’d been hired to replace Snyder on Justice League back in 2017.

“Joss Whedon’s on-set treatment of the cast and crew of Justice League was gross, abusive, unprofessional, and completely unacceptable,” Fisher tweeted. He added, bringing Snyder’s alleged threat regarding his onetime colleagues to fruition five days after Snyder made his final push to have the pair removed: “He was enabled, in many ways, by Geoff Johns and Jon Berg.” (Nearly all of the insiders interviewed by Rolling Stone say they believe Fisher and Snyder were working in tandem, based on Fisher’s tweets coming directly on the heels of Snyder’s behind-the-scenes demands. Snyder calls the allegation “totally untrue”; Fisher declined comment to Rolling Stone.) Gal Gadot echoed Fisher’s complaints about Whedon’s on-set behavior, saying that the director “kind of threatened my career and said if I did something, he would make my career miserable.” The actress Charisma Carpenter — who had worked with Whedon on two TV series — took to Twitter to say the director had “abused his power on numerous occasions while working together on the sets of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel.”

Whedon has denied these accusations against him. As for Fisher’s subsequent charge that top executives participated in “blatantly racist conversations” surrounding the film according to people who’d been “in the room,” an external investigation, conducted by Katherine Forrest of the law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore and concluded in December 2020, found “no credible support” that there was racial animus at Warner Bros. and cleared Berg, Johns, and Emmerich of such charges.

That same month, a battle was also brewing between Snyder and DC Films president Walter Hamada over a Snyder Cut arc involving the character Martian Manhunter. Sources say the character never appeared in the script, leaving the studio blindsided. Hamada demanded the footage not be used; DC had other plans for Martian Manhunter and didn’t want him wasted in two random scenes. But sources say Snyder threatened to delete other footage if he didn’t get his way. (Snyder denies this and adds that he had no ability to do so.) At the same time, Fisher turned up the dial on Twitter, taking direct aim at Hamada, calling him “the most dangerous kind of enabler.” (In Feb. 2021, Cravath’s Forrest released a statement absolving Hamada of any wrongdoing. Warner Bros. also released a statement noting that Hamada was at a different Warner subsidiary when 2017’s Justice League was released.) Fans posted such incendiary images as Hamada and Sarnoff, who had also been fighting for the removal of the unauthorized footage, photoshopped wearing Ku Klux Klan robes.

In a move that dismayed studio insiders, Kilar overruled Sarnoff and allowed Martian Manhunter to appear in the Snyder Cut. The director was also given the $13 million he’d been demanding in production costs. That brought the studio’s total expenditure on the film to $73 million, before marketing costs put it over the $100 million mark. “That’s $73 million while people were losing their jobs at the studio for a director’s cut of a film that already lost hundreds of millions,” notes an insider. (Snyder says “The studio never would have released my version of Justice League unless it made financial/business sense for them.”)

But for those who thought the SnyderVerse mob would move on, they were mistaken. In early 2021, Fisher attacked Warner Bros.’ then-global communications head, Johanna Fuentes, for some unspecified role in the Cravath investigation. Fans then began harassing Fuentes, a woman of color, on Twitter and calling for her ouster. A simple story written by this reporter about Kiersey Clemons being cast for a Flash stand-alone movie also incurred the wrath of the collective just days before the Snyder Cut release in March 2021. Snyder called to say he wanted several sentences from the story removed. “I’m just telling you what the fans are going to do. Trust me, they are pretty, pretty, pretty rough,” he warned. The sentences stayed, and the SnyderVerse throng descended.

Even after the film opened, random bystanders continued to be hit by the SnyderVerse shrapnel. When fans review-bombed Adam Wingard’s Godzilla vs. Kong, sources say the director asked Snyder through an intermediary to tell his fans to stand down — and that Snyder refused. (Snyder says he was never asked to have his fans stand down, adding: “Furthermore, I do not control my fans. They have their own will and their own opinions; you really give me too much credit.”) Another source says Warner Bros. successfully lobbied IMDb, which includes user reviews, to weed out trolls targeting Godzilla vs. Kong. (Wingard declined comment.) Similarly, factions of the SnyderVerse army review-bombed James Gunn’s Suicide Squad four months later, motivating the director to acknowledge the mob on Twitter: “I’ll live — stuff like this means nothing in the big picture. (And important to point out most the SnyderCut fans have been supportive, it’s only a few who feel it’s worthwhile spending their time doing stuff like this.)” Ultimately, both films outperformed Snyder Cut on HBO Max.

One year after the film’s release, Snyder is no longer working with Warner Bros., having moved on to Netflix, where he is currently shooting the sci-fi film Rebel Moon, described as an ambitious two-part movie. Fisher is playing a resistance fighter named Blood Axe. The studio’s plans for the DC Extended Universe no longer involve Snyder, who finally returned the Justice League materials he’d confiscated following a settlement reached with the studio in August 2021.

The SnyderVerse army often called for a number of heads to roll at Warner Bros. and WarnerMedia. Hamada appears safe, given the success of this year’s The Batman, a movie made outside of the Snyder-built interconnected universe. Johns continues to work with WarnerMedia on projects including The CW’s breakout Stargirl, whose third season debuts on Aug. 31. And Berg is said to have unannounced projects in development with the studio. Several executives caught in the Sndyer web didn’t survive a recent regime change ushered in after Discovery closed a $43 billion deal to acquire WarnerMedia, including Kilar, Sarnoff, Emmerich, and Fuentes, though “it had nothing to do with the SnyderVerse,” says one insider at WarnerMedia. Emmerich, for one, inked a five-year producing deal with the studio. Still, that didn’t stop the fandom from celebrating and taking credit for those executives’ exits. They now use hashtags #RestoreTheSnyderVerse and #DeborahSnyderForDCStudios, referring to a push to make Snyder’s wife the head of the DCEU.

Some who witnessed the SnyderVerse fan wrath privately lament that WarnerMedia didn’t do a better job of protecting those affected. One called it “the grossest examples of mass indifference” as executives were left hung out to dry. But those measures likely would have done little to stop the onslaught of one of social media’s most vicious communities.

For his part, Snyder says: “As an artist it was fulfilling to be able to finally see my vision realized after such a difficult time in my life and for it to be so well received. I am grateful to both the fan community and Warner Bros. for allowing this to happen. To dwell on negativity and rumors serves no one.” Referencing various charitable causes to which the Snyder army has donated funds, he adds, “If this is indeed a balanced article, I hope that all the good work the fandom has done is being represented.”

Regardless of whether there was behind-the-scenes manipulation in the SnyderVerse, for Wanta, whose firm spots and analyzes inauthentic online activity, the phenomenon offers a blueprint on how to weaponize a fan base. “That’s my concern with the manipulation that’s happening inside these movements, relative to bots — you can drive the court of public opinion,” says Wanta. “It needs to be dealt with, because it’s going to get worse before it gets better.”

Source: Rolling Stone

UltimateMarvel wrote:I held on to hope for a MOS sequel with Cavill but fuck it! At this point, a reboot is the only option. Wylde, I'm with you, they should shelf Flashpoint and never release it.

For most of the 2010s, Warner Bros. cast a massive shadow at San Diego Comic-Con. Between its substantial presence on the showroom floor and a pull-out-all-the-stops presentation in Hall H that could stretch well beyond two hours, the studio was second to none — not even its main rival, Marvel Studios — in its ability to leverage the largest fan convention in North America to its advantage.

This year, the studio took a decidedly different approach. It skipped the show floor completely, including a presence for DC Comics. And while it did use its hour-long panel in Hall H to showcase two of its 2022 releases — “Black Adam” and “Shazam! Fury of the Gods” — the studio’s biggest DC movies for 2023, “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” and “The Flash,” were completely MIA. There was no mention of other DC titles like “Batgirl” (expected to debut this year) and “Blue Beetle” (the first Latino superhero film), nor updates on the future of Gal Gadot’s “Wonder Woman” and Robert Pattinson’s “The Batman.” (Meanwhile, persistent internet rumors of an appearance by “Man of Steel” star Henry Cavill also proved to be as unfounded as they seemed.)

Instead, “Shazam! 2” star Zachary Levi bantered with costars Lucy Liu, Asher Angel and Jack Dylan Grazer and director David F. Sandberg, while Helen Mirren and Rachel Zegler appeared in a scripted video message in which Mirren celebrated her female costars by saying, “Yay, pussy power!”

It was up to Dwayne Johnson, in costume as Black Adam, to bring the drama, emerging on a raised platform surrounded in smoke and sending a bolt of lightning into the audience — activating blue lights in lanyards handed out to the Hall H audience.

The crowd lapped it up, but there was a palpable sense that they were eager for more: An audience member asked Levi if Shazam would fight Superman (Levi played dumb and then winked at the audience), and Johnson was asked how Black Adam would fare against the man of steel. (Johnson’s eyebrow-raising reply: “It probably all depends on who’s playing Superman.”)

As for “Aquaman 2” and “The Flash,” studio insiders have said those films are too far away on the schedule to warrant a big splash at Comic-Con. But in previous years, Warner Bros. has used Hall H as a launching pad for films well beyond the calendar year. The 2014 panel for the studio included the first-ever look at 2015’s “Mad Max: Fury Road.” Zack Snyder first announced 2016’s “Batman v Superman” at Comic-Con in 2013; the panel for the film was held in 2015.

Both “Aquaman 2” and “The Flash” completed shooting months ago, giving their respective directors, James Wan and Andy Muschietti, plenty of time to put together some sizzling footage to whip up the buzz commensurate with the characters’ stature among the Comic-Con faithful.

“Aquaman 2,” however, costars Amber Heard, who just spent months at the center of one of the ugliest public court battles in Hollywood history against her ex-husband Johnny Depp. A jury found in June that they both defamed each other, but Depp was awarded millions more in damages against Heard, who was also relentlessly ridiculed and excoriated by Depp’s fans on social media. (She filed a notice of appeal on July 21.)

And “The Flash” star Ezra Miller is facing multiple allegations of abusive behavior, including choking a woman in Iceland and harassing another woman in her home in Berlin, as well as two arrests in Hawaii this year — once in March, for disorderly conduct and harassment, and another a month later, for second-degree assault. (Miller has never commented on the allegations of misconduct against them; a source close to the situation told Variety in June that the actor is privately focusing on their health and healing, hoping to address the allegations at some point in the future.)

The circumstances of Heard and Miller’s situations are quite different. However, in both cases, Warner Bros. is facing down an impossible dilemma without much precedent, even in the #MeToo era: How to promote their escapist superhero franchises when their stars are embroiled in toxic scandals that overwhelm all other conversation about them.

In the case of “Aquaman 2,” Walter Hamada, who runs the studio’s DC unit, testified in a video deposition in the Heard-Depp trial that the studio did consider recasting Heard in the role of Mera opposite star Jason Momoa because the actors “didn’t have a lot of chemistry together.”

“Editorially they were able to make that relationship work in the first movie, but there was a concern that it took a lot of effort to get there,” Hamada said. It’s not exactly a rousing endorsement for a movie.

Mera, however, isn’t the central character for “Aquaman,” and promotion for the film could downplay Heard’s presence. That isn’t possible for “The Flash,” which is built around Miller’s performances as multiple versions of their speedster character, Barry Allen. Though the studio could replace Miller for any future “Flash” movies, calls to reshoot Muschietti’s film with a new actor are financially untenable.

The Flash was referenced during the panel, in the “Shazam! 2” trailer, just not by name; though the character appeared on screen, Miller’s face did not. (By contrast Aquaman and Batman get a full name-check in the trailer, with Momoa and Ben Affleck’s faces both appearing on screen.)

At some point, Warner Bros. will need to engage the DC fan base about these films and the actors within them. But rather than try to navigate these choppy waters in front of some 6,000-plus superfans at Comic-Con, Warner Bros. elected to avoid them altogether — for now.

#TheFlash has cameos by Ben Affleck, Jeremy Irons, Gal Gadot, Jason Momoa, and Nikolaj Waldau. There is also a CGI-ed version of Christopher Reeve and Helen Slater. Michael Keaton as Batman and Sasha Calle as Supergirl are supporting characters. Half the runtime has Keaton in it.

To answer some of #TheFlash queries I recvd:

*The Nikolaj Coster-Waldau cameo is non consequential to the plotline. He's just one of those dudes from whom Barry steals a hotdog while speeding. The same happens with Andy Muschietti's cameo towards the end of the film.

*Apparently Ezra Miller(s) were fantastic in #TheFlash. The current Barry Allen and an 18yr old Barry Allen had an amazing chemistry. Have been told that Miller absolutely nails both the performances.

*The Flash opens with a literal "Baby Shower" scene that will remind you of the amazing Quicksilver kitchen scene from X-Men: Days of Future Past. In this scene we see Barry replenishing his energy snacking on food while saving a bunch of falling babies from Gotham General!!

*When the space-time continuum starts collapsing, #TheFlash starts seeing heroes from different worlds. And that's when we see CGI-ed Adam West, Reeve, Helen Slater and Linda Carter. There's also a Superman character who's face is blurred, probably to include a new actor.

*5 scenes that got the loudest cheers during #TheFlash:
1. The Barrys meeting Keaton
2. Keaton coming out in his Batsuit for the 1st time.
3. Young Barry seeing old Batmobile.
4. BatKeaton saying "You wanna get nuts?!"
5. Keaton taking over as THE Batman.

*Sasha Calle plays Kara Zor-el aka Supergirl in #TheFlash. She plays her part really well. Kara is mainly there to battle it out with General Zod. As the final battle sequence is happening during the 'Man of Steel' timeline.

*Keaton sure plays an integral supporting character to Barry, but #TheFlash still is a Barry Allen film. It's about his desire to change the past & bring back his mom, and also prove his dad's innocence. Keaton is amazing no doubt, but he doesn't steal Barry's lightning.

*There's a hilarious scene between Present Barry Allen and Young Barry Allen where they discuss 'Back to the Future'. In this 'Young Barry' timeline, Eric Stoltz stayed on as Marty McFly, and Michael J Fox went on to be in 'Footloose'. Ezra Millers nail this scene!

*The last scene of #TheFlash is Barry walking into his home after winning his dad's case, and noticing flashing computer screens. All of a sudden Ben Affleck shows up on them & says, "You have to save us Barry! We've been trying to get in touch with you. We are stuck here!"

UltimateMarvel wrote:It makes more sense to have Affleck again so whatever they need to do, they need to do it now. But they should know that there is no stopping this train wreck.

Keaton is obviously going to be the best part and that Kara battle in Man of Steel sounds interesting.

Warner Bros. Discovery will not release “Batgirl,” neither theatrically or on HBO MAX, TheWrap has learned.

The film, made under a previous regime, was initially designed to be an HBO Max release, and then was being considered for theatrical distribution. Due to COVID issues and shutdowns, the budget ballooned to $90 million.

The movie stars “In the Heights” breakout star Leslie Grace in the title role of Barbara Gordon.

The leaders of the studio determined ultimately in spite of reshoots and increased budget, did not work, according to insiders. The new owners and management are committed to making DC titles big theatrical event films, and “Batgirl” isn’t that. Insiders add that studio brass loves the film’s directors and star, and are actively planning to work with them soon.

Warner Bros. Discovery is working to elevate DC Films to be seen on the big screen. “Batgirl” had not been scripted or produced as a theatrical film.

“Bad Boys for Life” filmmaking duo Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah directed “Batgirl.”

Batgirl made her debut in the Batman mythos 50 years ago as Barbara Gordon, the daughter of Gotham City Police Commissioner Jim Gordon. Since then, she has become one of the most popular superheroines in the world. When Barbara Gordon was paralyzed by a gunshot from the Joker in the classic graphic novel “The Killing Joke,” other crimefighters, like The Huntress and Orphan, took up the Batgirl name while Barbara became Oracle, a tech-savvy aide to Batman. Barbara later returned to the Batgirl role, while her assault in “The Killing Joke” was retconned.

Filming initially took place in Glasgow, Scotland, from November 2021 to March 2022.

More to come…

The New York Post first reported the news.

Source: The Wrap

@ViewerAnon OK well no point holding info anymore: Michael Keaton only had 5 scenes in BATGIRL. He didn't train Barbara, she just dressed up as Batman for a Halloween party, stopped some terrorists, and tweaked the costume to be a superhero.

UltimateMarvel wrote:There are bigger issues going on and a Batgirl movie wasn't going to fix anything but pile onto it. Nobody wanted a Batgirl movie anyway, this is for the best.

joey con carne wrote:Can DC do anything right? They should just quit and stick to comics.

Ill be dead before they film something worthwhile.

I thought Black Adam might be cool but that looks more and more like ass as they release more “trailers”.

The death of “Batgirl” on Tuesday sent immediate shockwaves through Hollywood. The film — with a $75 million budget that grew to $90 million due to COVID-related overages — had finished shooting months ago and was in test screenings as directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah (“Bad Boys for Life,” “Ms. Marvel”) worked through the post-production process. Star Leslie Grace (“In the Heights”) had given multiple interviews expressing her enthusiasm for landing the title role and working with co-stars Michael Keaton (as Batman), J.K. Simmons (as her character’s father, Commissioner Gordon) and Brendan Fraser (as the villain, Firefly).

In other words, the movie was nearly finished, and already building awareness among fans. Why would Warner Bros. Discovery throw all that away?

According to sources with knowledge of the situation, the most likely reason: taxes.

Several sources note that “Batgirl” was made under a different regime at Warner Bros., headed by Jason Kilar and Ann Sarnoff, that was singularly focused on building its streaming service, HBO Max. That effort included Kilar’s infamous decision to release the studio’s entire 2021 theatrical slate simultaneously on the streamer, which helped build the subscriber base but also jeopardized the studio’s reputation with top-tier talent (though many agents and stars privately came to appreciate the move when the company paid generous bonuses as a make-nice).

Even before David Zaslav took the reins of the newly formed Warner Bros. Discovery as CEO this spring, the exec went on a well-publicized listening tour designed to repair the company’s relationship with the creative community. As part of that effort, Zaslav has made no secret of reversing Kilar’s strategy and committing to releasing first-run feature films in theaters before putting them on HBO Max.

“Batgirl” found itself on the bad end of that decision, apparently neither big enough to feel worthy of a major theatrical release nor small enough to make economic sense in an increasingly cutthroat streaming landscape. Spending the money to expand the scope of “Batgirl” for theaters — plus the $30 million to $50 million needed to market it domestically and the tens of millions more needed for a global rollout — could have nearly doubled spending on the film, and insiders say that was a non-starter at a company newly focused on belt-tightening and the bottom line. (Spokespeople for Warner Bros. and Warner Bros. Discovery declined to comment for this story.)

Releasing the movie on HBO Max would seem to be the most obvious solution. Instead, the company has shelved “Batgirl” — along with the “Scoob!” sequel — and several sources say it will almost certainly take a tax write-down on both films, seen internally as the most financially sound way to recoup the costs (at least, on an accountant’s ledger). It could justify that by chalking it up to a post-merger change of strategy.

Doing so, however, would mean that Warner Bros. cannot monetize either movie — no HBO Max debut, no sale to another studio.

What the decision will cost the studio in creative capital, meanwhile, remains to be seen.

Source: Variety

joey con carne wrote:You’re fucking with all of us saying Blue Beetle is in the works, right? That is such a wild thing to say I believe you! LOL

Who the heck cares about Blue Beetle?! What a joke the DC Universe turned out to be.

Yeah I'm totally fucking with you. Filming wrapped on July 18th, it's already in the can.

@greatphase15 I'm also pretty certain the Green Lantern HBOmax series was canned a while ago. Will be interesting to see what else is canned and moving forward.

UltimateMarvel wrote:It will take time to un-fuck this mess but maybe that's what this David Zaslav is trying to do or at least start the process.

joey con carne wrote:Good lord, man. You were serious about Blue Beetle. WTF I legit thought you were messing around. There goes Wylde. Making some completely absurd comment that is so far out there that people would have to think he was serious because no one would make that up. Then you bust out the photos... f me.

I love how DC shelves Batwoman for retarded reasons yet still haven’t gotten rid of Ezra Miller after all the shit he has done recently.

DC has their collective heads so far up their ass and are complete failures in the movie industry. I am looking forward to every single movie they make bomb. I hope they lose more money and fans.

UltimateMarvel wrote:It will take time to un-fuck this mess but maybe that's what this David Zaslav is trying to do or at least start the process.

joey con carne wrote:

UltimateMarvel wrote:It will take time to un-fuck this mess but maybe that's what this David Zaslav is trying to do or at least start the process.

Yea, here's the timeline where they reboot everything:

Superman: 2028
Wonder Woman: 2029
Green Lantern: 2031
Batman: 2033
Aquaman: 2034
Flash: 2037
Justice League: 2043

With their current track record, this is a completely plausible timeline. It only took 8 years from announcing Black Adam until it was released so I'm actually being very aggressive with a 2028 start time of rebooting DC so it doesn't suck.