Ethan Van Sciver says ‘Justice League’ bombing at the box office to blame for DC, Warner layoffs
The story emerged that 3% of DC’s workforce, along with 10% of staff at Warner Bros. Consumer Products, was being laid off, and according to comic book artist Ethan Van Sciver, the box office failure of Justice League has a lot to do with these cuts.
Comic book artist Ethan Van Sciver stated in a new YouTube video that the company’s ongoing problems go back to Justice League and the difficulties that unfolded behind the scenes.
“Why is this happening? It’s happening because of the Justice League movie. That’s what it is. The Justice League movie was a catastrophic disaster for Warner Bros and for DC, for the DCEU. What happened was, it was underway with a $350 million budget under Zack Snyder. Zack Snyder had a family crisis, and some of you know what that is, and it is completely understandable that he exited from the movie and couldn’t finish it. The movie still needed to be completed.”
The Green Lantern artist explained that the Joss Whedon’s reshoots proved enormously expensive, yet never really improved the end product.
“Decisions were made to have Joss Whedon come in and finish the movie. Joss Whedon didn’t like what he saw, apparently, and asked for close to $300 million from what I’ve heard. If you have better information about this, let me known, but he basically asked for an enormous, almost equal to the original production budget to reshoot and to finish Justice League. The Zack Snyder movie. [Whedon] made it into something else. The movie was a catastrophe. And it was an expensive catastrophe. It lost an awful lot of money.”
He said the departure of DC Entertainment president Diane Nelson and others is linked to this box office disaster: “You have to imagine what spending close to $700 million on a movie and losing hundreds of millions of dollars on a movie can do to people, can do to their jobs. Shortly after, Diane [Nelson] took a break. Diane never came back. She announced she was staying gone. Geoff Johns, I think, also took some of the blame for the Justice League movie, and he lost his position there. Others at DC have who were involved with the Justice League movie also lost their jobs, lost their positions. The effects are still rippling.”
Van Sciver explained the financial loss of the comic books.
“All of this is terrible because the comic books don’t make money. The comic books are a loss-leader for Warner Bros. and DC, but certainly, these characters in film and video games should be a cash cow. For a movie that was supposed to launch a million other movies, to actually become a box office failure, it was absolutely devastating. I think DC Comics is still reeling from that.”
