It may be hard to believe that a futuristic spy plane could derail a movie set in eighth-century China, but that is exactly what the crapfest that is Stealth did as the Los Angeles Times tells us that Columbia Pictures has pulled the plug on The 8th Voyage of Sinbad, which was set to star Keanu Reeves and be directed by Stealth helmer Rob Cohen.
A killer quote by Amy Pascal, head of the motion picture group for Sony Pictures Entertainment, can be found in the Times article saying, “It didn’t seem like a good idea for us to make that movie after Stealth.”
Damn! You can almost see Smokey standing over Cohen’s body shouting, “You got knocked the fuck out!”
This isn’t exactly a slap in Cohen’s face, I mean the guy has had hits with the first Fast and the Furious and xXx movies, two movies I semi-enjoyed, so let’s not go bashing the man. I only hope the film was put on the shelf because it had a shitty script. While I don’t think Cohen or Reeves were good choices to bring to the big screen the story of Sinbad I don’t think they would destroy a good script, they would have only helped it along.
Stealth is easily the biggest bust of the year as it cost Sony $135 million to make and it only brought in $32.1 million in domestic theaters resulting in an overall loss across the board in almost $50 million.
Hopefully this will signify a change in the industry where studios will not simply make films based on effects. There will hopefully now be a focus on story and the intelligence of the viewing audience.
I have to say well-done, I hope it was the right move for the movie and for the industry.
