It’s not unheard of for a film’s financer to get cold feet on a production, but it’s not often when a movie is less than three weeks away from shooting when the plug is pulled and the entire crew is sent home.
According to Deadline, that is the case with director Albert Hughes’ revenge drama Motor City, starring Gerard Butler, Mickey Rourke and Adrien Brody, as the film’s producers realized the March 31 delivery date set by Warner Bros. for the movie didn’t give them enough time for necessary post-production and have decided to shut the production down.
With plans to start filming on September 17, the film’s backers Emmett/Furla Films, Envision Entertainment and Mark Damons Foresight, saw that it might be a problem finishing the movie in time for the release date set by distributor Warner Bros, which played a large factor in the film’s international distribution deals. Unable to make the hard release date, the project
was unable to secure a bond to move forward.
In the film, Gerard Butler was going to play a man who wants revenge on those who framed him and had him imprisoned (similar to his 2009 thriller Law Abiding Citizen actually), but right now, the producers are scrambling to work things out with the cast and crew and it’s uncertain whether Warner Bros. will remain involved if they get back up and running.
What’s interesting about the reasons for stopping production is that Warner Bros. hadn’t announced a release date for the film publicly, and some may wonder why this release date wasn’t negotiated earlier to be pushed back to allow Hughes the time to do the needed post-production rather than just stopping things cold.
Either way, this news is being reported by Deadline, who even were able to get a statement from someone representing the producers on the shut-down:
Faced with the realities of a very short post-production schedule and complicated visual and special effects, the producers have decided to push back production on Albert Hughes Motor City. We are dedicated to delivering top-tier productions such as 2 Guns starring Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg which is currently in production and Peter Bergs Lone Survivor which is in pre-production. The circumstances surrounding this project made it impossible to meet the firm March 31st delivery date without compromising the quality of the film.
Meanwhile Emmett/Furla Films have a number of other films in various stages of production including the Fox thriller Broken City, directed by Albert Hughes’ brother Allen, starring Mark Wahlberg, Russell Crowe and Catherine Zeta-Jones, the Sly Stallone-Arnold Schwarzenegger prison drama The Tomb at Summit, 2 Guns pairing Denzel Washington with Wahlberg, Stephen Frears’ Lay the Favorite starring Bruce Willis, Rebecca Hall, Zeta-Jones and Vince Vaughn, which premiered at Sundance and will be released by Radius-TWC and Peter Berg’s Lone Survivor in pre-production for Universal.
(Photo Credit: Lia Toby/WENN.com)
