Anyone who listens to Bret Easton Ellis’bi-weekly podcast, follows him on Twitter, or has read any of his novels, knows that the professional provocateur has never shied away from, well, provoking. On Friday however, Ellis did something he almost never does—he backpedalled.
Ellis was interviewed recently by The Ringer’s Sean Fennessy, for an insightful piece on the future of movies. In it, Ellis is quoted as saying that unnamed Hollywood executives told him that the new Batman script blows, and that Warner Bros. doesn’t care because the movie will make a boatload of money overseas no matter what the final product looks like.
Well, that didn’t sit well with the Batman stans, who are hoping that Ben Affleck—who is writing, directing, and starring in the tentatively titled The Batman—will right DC’s ship after the debacle that was Batman v Superman. Ellis’ anecdote went viral, but there was nothing in the interview that painted the author in a negative light, other than making him look like someone with a big mouth who can’t be trusted when dining with Hollywood suits. Perhaps that alone was enough to convince Ellis to apologize, which he kind of, sort of did on Twitter:
“During a long interview with The Ringer’s Sean Fennessey, we talked about reasons why studio movies are so bad now and touched on the global needs of the marketplace. I told him something I had heard about the new Batman movie as an example of what might be the problem: I was talking with two executives who have NOTHING to do with the Batman movie and who KNEW people who were involved with the production. The two executives I was having dinner with were relating the problems they had heard about the script from people working on the Batman project–that’s all. I know no one involved with the Batman movie and I didn’t realize that my comments would make it into The Ringer piece or else I wouldn’t have cited that particular movie–I have no idea what the Batman script is like and I regret that it came off as if I was disparaging the project. Another reason to be careful giving interviews.”
So the two main takeaways here are: Don't tell Bret Easton Ellis a secret, and maybe, just maybe the new Batman movie won’t suck.
