The $90 million Batgirl movie was shot in 2022. Photo: TCD/Prod.DB/Alamy Stock Photo
In Stephen King's 1975 bestseller. , «Salem's Lot», a vampire emerges from his crypt and terrorizes a New England town. Aquaman director James Wan's new adaptation of the novel suffered the opposite fate: it was sealed away and left to rot. But not before King had a chance to watch it. “This is very good,” he tweeted this week. «Old School Horror Filmmaking: Slow Build, Big Payoff.»
King loves a twist ending, and his tweet has a twist. “It’s not clear why the World Bank is holding back on this,” he said. «It's not like it's embarrassing or anything.»
«WB» stands for Warner Bros, the Hollywood studio that financed Salem's Lot and originally announced it would be released in May 2022. That date was pushed back to April 2023 as Warner blamed «Covid-related delays in post-production.» Then, last October, King revealed that the film had been «shelved.» That was the last anyone heard of it until his last tweet.
Wherever the film is, it's in good company. Since Warner Brothers' merger with the Discovery network in April 2022, the «new» conglomerate Warner Bros Discovery has been busy sending movies and TV shows into limbo to take advantage of tax write-offs — all in an apparent attempt to service $45.3 billion in debt. At Warner's headquarters in Burbank, you might say that film freezes are the cool new trend.
Warner's initial focus was on streaming site HBO Max, where shows like Westworld and The Underdog were shelved to save money (if the series doesn't air, you don't have to pay royalties). Warner Bros Discovery has now moved into film. It all started with Batgirl, the $90 million DC superhero spin-off set to air on Max in 2022. Batgirl was canceled and would never be seen, allowing the studio to take advantage of tax breaks.
Stephen King was confused decision to abandon the Salem site. Photo: John Lamparski
The economics of Hollywood are notoriously difficult. However, the logic behind Batgirl's decision is simple. Batgirl's canning meant Warner could pre-report it as a loss on its tax returns, allowing it to write off $15 million to $20 million of its liabilities for that fiscal year. If Warner Bros went ahead and released this feature and it ended up losing money, it would potentially take years to recoup the same amount. This savings will pay for itself immediately.
There was protest, but Warner Bros Discovery CEO David Zaslav was not against it. Since then, he's buried Salem's Lot and two new animated Scooby-Doo films, Sub! Holiday Ghost and Scooby-Doo! and Crypto too! (although the last one was leaked last year). Most controversial of all was the decision to scrap the highly anticipated action/animated comedy Coyote vs. Acme.
Even more so than Salem's Lot, this project looked like a surefire hit. Wile E. Coyote is the star of Warner's beloved Looney Tunes cartoons, and test screenings of the finished film were overwhelmingly positive. “Devilishly devastating,” one insider lamented of the decision to scrap the release in an exchange with Rolling Stone.
Of all Zaslav's actions, blocking the screening of the Looney Tunes film is considered the most incomprehensible. Warner spent $70 million on Coyote vs. Acme, which had an impressive cast led by former wrestler John Cena and comedian Will Forte, and was directed by David Greene (who made the 2016 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot Out of the Shadows «).
Scene from the movie «Coyote vs. Acme» Author: Warner Bros.
What's even more puzzling is that Warner initially announced that it would sell Coyote vs. Acme to another studio. However, his asking price was the entire budget of $70 million—even though the most he could get through under-budget tax credits was $30 million. It seemed as if the executives did not want the film to hit theaters under any circumstances.
“The offer to sell the film was, to put it mildly, not in good faith,” Matt Zoller Seitz wrote on Rogerebert.com. «It seems like a company would rather make less money by scrapping a movie than sell it for even a few dollars more because they could risk a competitor turning it into a success, further embarrassing them for not even trying it do. to promote it independently, even though it was built on an intellectual property…inextricably tied to Warner Bros.»
It's been a tough few years for Warner Bros Discovery. Many in Hollywood view Zaslav as a barbarian who broke through the gates and laid waste to everything around him.
His background was in cable television, a very different business from Hollywood, and his ruthless focus on profit and loss alarmed and angered many in Tinsel Town. This industry will tolerate thugs like Harvey Weinstein as long as they believe in the idea of cinema as sanctity. Zaslav is a moneymaker, and his willingness to bury Coyote vs. Acme in a deep dark place and reap $30 million in tax savings was met with open disgust.
“Zaslav is the man in charge of Frankencorp Warner Bros. Discovery, and in an impressively short period of time, he has managed to ruin almost everything in his sizable portfolio,” began an exposé in SFGate that expressed hatred for Zaslav. called around Tinseltown. “He is a parasite: a terrible CEO, an enemy of artists.”
“An enemy of artists”: Warner Bros. CEO. David Zaslav Photo: OD GUERRUCCI
«Terrible» or not, he's not quite the larger-than-life character many in Hollywood would like to believe. Netflix, for example, is pursuing Halle Berry's unreleased sci-fi film Mothership from Bridge of Spies co-writer Matthew Charman.
The premise is intriguing. Berry plays a single mother trying to raise her family after her husband mysteriously disappears. Then she discovers an alien mothership underneath the family farm: it may hold the key to her husband's disappearance! Who wouldn't want to watch Halle Berry fight aliens? Netflix, for example, the company's chief content officer Bela Bajaria, said that everyone who saw Mothership agreed that «it's better not to watch it.»
Of course, the same can be said about “Love Island” — and look at its success. But Bahariya stood firm.
“This doesn’t happen very often, it’s very rare,” she said at a news conference. “When you think about how many things we produce, it's a rare thing. But this was a case where there were a lot of production and creative problems.”
This may be rare, but not unheard of. The Hollywood archives are full of films that are destined to never see the light of day — the logic of their banishment is often shrouded in mystery. For example, as Oppenheimer star Cillian Murphy counts down to next month's Oscars, few have mentioned his never-before-seen 2007 period piece Hippy Hippie Shake, in which he starred opposite Sienna Miller in a retelling of the true story of Oz Magazine » obscenity trial in 1970.
It was never released because it was rumored to be too terrible to be inflicted on the public. “Eventually, after several requests, I was allowed to see a copy of what I think is quite possibly the worst movie made in the 21st century,” said Felix Dennis, the Oz editor played in “Hippie Hippie Shake.” by Chris O'Dowd. “Absolute disgusting… a dog's breakfast.”
Infamous: Jerry Lewis in The Day the Clown Cried, 1972. Photo: Christophel Collection/Alamy Stock Photo
And then there are the movies that shouldn't have been made in the first place. The most famous example is the 1972 Jerry Lewis film The Day the Clown Cried, in which the king of comedy plays a clown sent to Auschwitz. The project is not meant for laughs and essentially shares the same storyline as the 1997 Oscar-winning film Life is Beautiful. However, from Lewis on down, everyone involved seemed to immediately regret their participation.
The day the clown cried was forgotten, and it remains there. However, those who watched the rough cut say it's as dark as it sounds. “Watching this film was truly impressive because it’s rare to see a perfect subject. It was the perfect subject,” actor Harry Shearer told Spy Magazine.
“This film is so fundamentally wrong, its pathos and comedy so misplaced, that you cannot, in your fantasies of what it could have been, improve upon what it actually is. «Oh my God!» is all you can say.”
Lewis was working on The Day the Clown Cried during the years that Stephen King was writing Salem's Lot. Some five decades later, the film adaptation of the latter suffered a fate similar to the comedian's folly. From ghoulish Holocaust brouhaha to iconic vampire antics, it's hard to think of two films that have less in common. However, they met the same ignominious end, both doomed to eternal undeath.
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