Bryan Singer’s Next Film Project, ‘Red Sonja,’ May Not Be Happening After All
It’s been just over two weeks since The Atlantic ran a story about film director Bryan Singer in which four new men accuse him of having sex with them while they were underage. And now we’re hearing that Singer’s next project, a live-action adaptation of the comic book character Red Sonja, has been put on the back burner.
Bryan Singer is of course coming off the success of Bohemian Rhapsody, a film he partially directed. Singer was fired weeks before the film completed shooting, though his name remained as the director’s credit due to guild laws. And though Singer has been shut out from any accreditation during this year’s awards season, it’s been reported that he stands to make $40 million from the film.
In a deal valued at $10 million, Bryan Singer was set to direct Red Sonja with Millennium Films, a production company known for its The Expendables movies. The title character — a red-headed, sword-wielding warrior seeking to avenge her family, whose own history actually involves a sexual assault — was created by Marvel Comics in 1973.
The character occasionally appeared alongside Conan the Barbarian, and in 1985 a feature film titled Red Sonja was released with Brigitte Nielsen in the lead role.
But now Millennium Films tells Deadline, “the project is not on the slate at the moment.” The production company did not, however, go so far as to say that Bryan Singer has been removed outright from the project.
The cast for the film, which will no longer shoot later this year in Bulgaria, has also not been set.
It’s an interesting turn of events, given that previously, Millennium CEO Avi Lerner called the allegations against Bryan Singer “fake news” and intimated nothing had changed in terms of the release of Red Sonja. Lerner told The Hollywood Reporter he’d received no negative feedback about the decision to move forward with the film. It appears something has now changed.
