Bryan Singer. A storm was slowly but surely brewing over the writer-director’s rumored past. It felt like it was just around the corner and ready to explode into the zeitgeist. In fact, many were just waiting for the bomb to come down after word came out of his erratic behavior on the set of the Freddy Mercury biopic "Bohemian Rhapsody."
His time did finally come when earlier this year , a series of tweets appeared from a man named Justin Smith, who alleged that Singer sexually assaulted him in the early aughts. The tweets have since been deleted, according to The Daily Wire.
Amidst all the chaos of Weinstein, Spacey, Toback and co. it had appeared that Singer’s own day of reckoning was here. His dirty reputation in the industry well known by many, people were preparing for the worst and that includes the USC School of Cinematic Arts whose students created a petition at Change.org asking for the removal of Singer from the Division of Cinema and Media Studios [Deadline].
Well, after all that, it seems like Singer has been hired to direct a new movie. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Singer is in talks to direct Independent studio Millennium’s "Red Sonja," a comic-book spin-off of "Conan the Barbarian."
Millennium actually had the chutzpah to tell THR that they hired Singer to give him a chance "to rehab his image."
Here's a bit of history on Singer:
After directing the Oscar-winning hit “ The Usual Suspects,” Singer was a hot commodity in Hollywood. However, only a year after winning the statuette, in 1997, a 14-year-old extra accused the director of asking him and other minors to film a shower scene naked for “Apt Pupil.” The suit was dismissed for insufficient evidence.
Since then, rumors have always been abounding in Hollywood about Singer, but not many “victims” would come forward. Did the “Apt Pupil” incident scare people away? It wasn’t enough to scare actor Michael Egan III whom, in April of 2014, accused Singer of sexual assault in an incident that occurred in 1999. Singer had allegedly drugged and raped Egan, who was a minor, in Hawaii and Los Angeles at the time of “Apt Pupil.” Singer denied the accusations, proclaiming them to be “outrageous, vicious, and completely false.” The suit was withdrawn by Egan, but another surfaced from a British man alleging similar behavior around the time of “Superman Returns.” Nonetheless, Singer continued making movies.