Bryan Singer Has A Plan To Save His Career After Sexual Assault Allegations
Bryan Singer is self-financing a documentary about his life following sexual assault allegations that ostracized him from Hollywood.
Bryan Singer, the director famous for the original X-Men films and Bohemian Rhapsody, was accused of rape in 2017. The accusation, along with Singer’s later decision to settle a lawsuit filed by the accusers, effectively ended Singer’s career. Now, Variety reports that Singer is defending himself against the accusations in what is probably the most Hollywood-esque way possible: self-financing a documentary about himself.
The documentary will reportedly cover Bryan Singer’s “struggles,” which include facing claims about his alleged sexual misconduct. The documentary will also cover Bryan Singer’s attempts to reignite his career in the wake of the accusations — attempts that, so far, have completely failed. Singer hasn’t directed a film since getting kicked off the Oscar-winning biopic Bohemian Rhapsody in 2017 and hasn’t had a single credit to his name since February 2019 — the month before an exposé by The Atlantic detailed the claims of four accusers.
In the article, The Atlantic details claims that Bryan Singer molested underage males both on-set and at private events. Singer, for his part, denied the allegations, lamenting that “mere accusations” have been harming people’s careers thanks to the #MeToo movement. He said that the reporters were demonstrating a “reckless disregard for the truth” — a phrase that, notably, mirrors the standard required for some libel lawsuits.
However, just three months after The Atlantic’s article came out, Bryan Singer chose to pay $150,000 to one accuser that filed a lawsuit against Singer back in 2017. About half of that money went to the accuser, and the remainder went to the accuser’s creditors as part of a bankruptcy agreement.
The 2017 lawsuit was not the first legal action taken against Bryan Singer. In 1997, multiple extras for the film Apt Pupil filed suits claiming that they were bullied into appearing naked in the film — lawsuits that were dismissed due to insufficient evidence.
The lawsuit and numerous other accusations against Bryan Singer resulted in a petition by USC students to remove Singer’s name from the university’s Department of Cinema and Media Studies. The university agreed to do so one month after the petition went live.
Not long after The Atlantic published its article, Bryan Singer was removed from a planned remake of the 1985 Arnold Schwarzenegger film Red Sonja. The film is based on an old comic series originally published by Marvel. Currently, Solomon Kane director M.J. Bassett is set to direct the long-delayed project.
Whether audiences will be receptive to Bryan Singer’s side of the story is an open question. Generally, creators whose careers were taken down by #MeToo allegations have found themselves unable to make a comeback, and viewers will likely be skeptical that the director is being honest in his portrayal of events.
Along with his self-financed documentary, Bryan Singer is reportedly planning on creating three low-budget films that will be made for $10 million each. These films will reportedly take place in Israel, where Singer is currently living. No information about the plots of these films has been made public, save for the rumor that one of them will be set in the 1970s.
