The 2007 Kevin Costner movie almost directed by Uwe Boll: “Let’s do this together!”
There are three pretty interesting facts about the German director Uwe Boll: firstly, he directed one of the worst films with the most impressive casts in history; secondly, he was about 15 years ahead of his time with his best movie; and third, he could very nearly have ended Kevin Costner‘s career.
Boll is a pretty divisive filmmaker to say the least, even Armie Hammer, the lead on his latest movie Citizen Vigilante, has reportedly called it ‘hateful and disgusting’, and coming from someone who historically sent people his cannibalistic fantasies, you know it’s probably a little ‘out there’.
Hammer was supposedly left in tears after watching the movie, about a right-wing man who is upset about the breakdown of law and order and so goes on a vigilante rampage, mostly targeting immigrants, and the film was panned by critics and refused a certificate to be shown in Germany. Subsequently, it was championed by Elon Musk, which probably tells you all you need to know, quite frankly.
But then Boll is not exactly a stranger to this kind of reaction, because he’s been making films that have upset people for twenty years, either because of their subject matter or just because they’re absolutely terrible. To give him his dues though, he doesn’t seem to care.
He will happily turn up to the Golden Raspberry Awards to accept ‘Worst Career Achievement’, and as for the critics? Well, in 2006, he challenged his five harshest critics to a ten-round boxing match, which, incredibly, they accepted. Boll fought and beat all five of them in the ring.
And it was the following year that he had the meeting with Costner, as he recalled to Rotten Tomatoes, saying, “I wanted Kevin Costner for (2007 fantasy action movie) In the Name of the King, and I met him before we hired Jason Statham. But he felt like he didn’t want to do it, and then he did Mr Brooks. He pitched to me Mr Brooks – and I was surprised how good the movie was, to be honest.”
A surprisingly dark venture for Costner, Mr Brooks was the story of a businessman and serial killer who takes on a protege after being blackmailed, only for the younger man to encourage him to kill more and more. Despite a decent cast including Costner, Demi Moore and William Hurt, feedback on the film was mixed, but it made a small profit at the box office and Boll himself was a fan. And it seems he could have had the chance to direct it.
Asked by Rotten Tomatoes to confirm if Costner really had pitched the movie to him, he explained, “Yeah. He was looking for co-financing and everything, and said ‘Let’s do this movie together!’
In many ways, Costner had something of a lucky escape. Had he decided to appear in Boll’s In the Name of the King, he would have been involved in a film that is still critically reviled, and that lost some $50million on release. Despite that, it managed to spawn two sequels, although Statham didn’t return for them. Somehow, it wasn’t even the only expensive flop that Boll made in 2007, as he also put out Postal, an action comedy that made light of the 9/11 attacks on New York.
