To say that Bryan Singer is a controversial director would be to deal in wild understatement.
This is, after all, someone who’s been plagued by allegations of rape and sexual assault since the early 90s – a time during which he was lauded for his work on The Usual Suspects and several other features. Singer then graduated into Hollywood’s big leagues thanks to X-Men and its rather brilliant sequel, X2, but those accusations were never too far behind him.
Most recently, The Atlantic published a troubling story about Singer’s alleged victims, which understandably led to widespread anger amongst many. Not to mention disbelief that he’s still working in Hollywood and being paid a hefty sum for all of his directing gigs. In fact, we recently learned that despite being fired from Bohemian Rhapsody halfway through production, he’ll still make about $40 million from the Queen biopic following its runaway success at the box office – over $800 million worldwide, last we checked.
And though the exact details of his dismissal from the project have yet to be revealed, star Rami Malek has now opened up a bit on the situation, saying that working with Singer was not a pleasant experience.
“I’ve sat here and talked about how everyone deserves a voice and anyone who wants to talk about what happened with Bryan deserves to have their voice heard. In my situation with Bryan, it was not pleasant, not at all. And that’s about what I can say about it at this point. … For anyone who is seeking any solace in all of this, Bryan Singer was fired. Bryan Singer was fired, I don’t think that was something anyone saw coming but I think that had to happen and it did.”
Of course, the Bryan Singer situation isn’t the only bit of controversy swirling around the film at the moment, as it also found itself a hot topic after becoming one of the worst-reviewed Golden Globe Best Picture winners of all-time. But even despite the backlash, the unexpected success that Bohemian Rhapsody has been seeing lately continues, with its box office total only climbing even higher and more and more awards attention being showered upon it.
In fact, after taking home the top prize at the Globes a few weeks back, that just leaves one question now: can the movie cause an upset on the night of the Oscars? We’ll find out on Sunday, February 24th.