Warner Bros is having a particularly bad year. When Amber Heard’s allegations against Johnny Depp first arose a few years ago, Warner Bros. was the studio that went after him the hardest and most publicly, dismissing him from his starring part in Fantastic Beasts and keeping Heard in Aquaman 2. This is going to be the most expensive single casting error in history.
The Depp-free Fantastic Beasts 3 has finally completed its run, grossing $396 million at the box office. With a budget of $200 million, it’s highly probable that Warner lost money on the film once marketing costs are factored in. The first Fantastic Beasts film grossed far over twice that ($811 million), despite having a smaller budget. The sequel produced a smaller but still respectable profit ($648 million), and reviewers agree that Beasts 3 is a far better film than its predecessor, so what accounts for the dramatic reduction in ticket sales?
I’m prepared to guess that at least $100 million of the loss may be attributed to one Mr. Depp. Depp has been tremendously popular online over the last few weeks of his trial, and he is now more popular among the general public than he has been in at least a decade. I’m sure many fans voted with their wallets and elected to avoid a film in which their idol had been brutally dumped. Consider what would happen if Depp had starred in the film: legions of his present, highly driven followers would buy tickets to support him, even if they wouldn’t have done so otherwise. Would he have been able to repeat the first’s success? Probably not, but he could have brought in enough money to save several Warner executives from their current predicament.
Oh, and the icing on top: despite Depp never doing a day of filming, Warner had to pay him his whole salary for the film because he was forced to resign.
The notoriously troublesome DCEU, on the other hand, is Warner’s other major cinematic project at the time. One of the franchise’s few bright spots was 2018’s Aquaman, which was by far the most profitable DCEU picture to date and the only one to surpass the $1 billion mark, grossing $1.14 billion on a comparably modest $160 million budget. Despite repeated pressure from fans throughout the filming of Aquaman 2, Warner Bros. declined to yield to crowd demand and remove Amber Heard from the film, as they did with Johnny Depp, despite credible allegations of domestic abuse against her. That decision now appears to have been disastrous, with a large number of individuals vowing not to see the film.
If the success of Fantastic Beasts 3 is any indicator, this isn’t simply idle internet conversation; it’ll have a real-world impact on ticket sales.
With other recent DCEU flops like The Suicide Squad and Birds of Prey, Wonder Woman 1984 being an incoherent mess, Justice League’s failure, complete confusion about what’s going on with Superman and Batman, and Ezra Miller’s recent reign of terror on Hawaii, the failure of Aquaman 2 could easily be enough to sink the entire project.
The bottom line is that Warner put his money on the wrong horse. They panicked and sided with Heard because they figured that standing with the woman in any scenario of domestic abuse was the commercially correct thing to do in the post-#MeToo environment, without giving the situation any critical thought.
Consider a scenario in which Warner had gone the other way and not dismissed Depp. Depp’s involvement would have preserved Fantastic Beasts 3 and brought in a little profit, allowing the franchise’s last two films (which now appear to be cancelled) to be created. Those flicks starring a resurgent Johnny Depp would very certainly be successful enough to carry the franchise forward; after all, Depp has a track record of carrying a franchise on his own (cough… Pirates… cough). Even if they hadn’t totally abandoned Amber, the fact that they didn’t dump Johnny would have earned them enough goodwill that it wouldn’t have made a difference, Aquaman 2 would have made a bigger profit, and the DCEU as a whole would have gotten a much-needed shot in the arm.
Overall, it’s simple to understand how a single casting decision could have cost Warner over a billion dollars in income.
The only way Warner could have been saved even slightly would have been if Heard had won her case, but now that the jury appears to have rejected all of Heard’s allegations of abuse and accepted Depp’s version of events, there is no turning back for Warner. They are firmly cast as the bad guys in this particular Hollywood story, and it is a role they cast for themselves.
