I’m not saying I’ve spoken to anyone about J.C. Chandor‘s departure from Deepwater Horizon. Maybe I’ve just had a chat with myself. But the situation boils down to this: Lionsgate/Summit changed their minds about the kind of movie they wanted, and when they realized Chandor hadn’t changed his mind and was resolutely focused on the film he’d been talking about and planning to make for many months, they pulled the plug and reached out to Peter Berg, who has now lost whatever cred he had accumulated from directing Lone Survivor and is now back to being the hack who made Battleship.

Other Guy: “It was truly just a situation in which a filmmaker and a studio wanted to make two different movies. And you can probably tell from who Lionsgate hired what they wanted. It wasn’t some dramatic firing. Just a huge budget and two visions that weren’t the same.”

Me: “All that work, all those months of preparation…and suddenly there are two different versions? Chandor presumably wasn’t hiding his intentions over the last several months so either Lionsgate/Summit wasn’t paying attention all that time or they changed their minds.”

Other Guy: “All along J.C. had naturally told them exactly what kind of film he intended to make. So yes, they changed their minds, and thought he would do their bidding in the end. To their surprise he walked, his cred intact.”