Hooper shot the horror pic early last year in the UAE (United Arab Emirates) for Imagenation Abu Dhabi. Khalid Laith and Razane Jammal star in the thriller about a couple who return home from the U.S. only to find their apartment is haunted by a malevolent spirit.
Djinn has been completed for a number of months now. A trailer was shown around the Toronto International Film Festival and the aim was to premiere the film at the Dubai International Film Festival, however, Movie Sushi has received word the studio’s head might shelve the film. Head inside for more details along with a new image.
The site’s Paolo Zelati translated his news item for us:
Rumors are swirling that someone close to Abu Dhabi’s royal family has seen the movie and does not appreciate its portrayal of the UAE and considers the movie to be politically subversive, and that they’ve paid off the studio’s chairman, Mohammed Al Mubarak, to bury it.
We have heard that even after the movie had a very successful earlier test screening in London, two other film companies even offered to buy it outright, but the chairman refused to hear their bids.
The whole cast and crew is furious with Imagenation [the studio]. They are telling everybody different stories. One actor in the film was even told by someone at the studio that it would never be released because it portrays a ‘witchcraft belief that the country does not acknowledge’. “That’s unbelievable!,” one source close to the production said. “Everybody knows what’s really going on but they’re afraid to talk because they think Al Mubarak will start a smear campaign against them in the Emirati pressn – which is not exactly fair or free.”
You have to wonder, if the problem is the film’s depiction of the UAE, wasn’t there someone monitoring this at Imagenation? That is, if all of this is true. Click on the image below for more pics from the film.
