The 2008 Keanu Reeves movie that almost ruined two careers: “I was not really employable”
Sometimes, a movie just fails on all fronts. You’re never going to win every time, and for Keanu Reeves, his acting career has been a bit like playing on a teddy picker.
When he puts his mind to it, he often succeeds with a really great project, like My Own Private Idaho or a megahit like The Matrix... Other times, he misses terribly, resulting in projects like The Day the Earth Stood Still.
Of course, I’m not talking about the 1951 sci-fi classic directed by Robert Wise – rather, Reeves would appear in the awful 2008 remake by Scott Derrickson, although the setting was slightly updated to reflect more period-accurate environmental concerns.
The movie just wasn’t a success with critics, who couldn’t figure out why Derrickson had simply made an inferior remake of an already beloved movie, but, with Reeves in the lead, at least it raked in a decent amount. On an $80million budget, the film grossed $233.1m.
But financial success isn’t always enough when the movie makes no real impact in any other area. In fact, the movie had a significant negative impact on both Derrickson and Reeves’ careers, with the pair both fearing the end as they knew it once they’d read the bad reviews.
Derrickson had his defence, though – he blamed the movie’s failure on the writer’s strike, which coincided with the film’s production period, with the director saying, “It was a horrific experience, and the movie did not turn out good. Well, it turned out OK in places at least. But it was one of those movies where it didn’t turn out as well as it needed to because of a lot of reasons, the writers’ strike being the main one.”
“And so after that movie, I was not really employable as a director for almost two years,” he admitted. That’s the thing about Hollywood. If you’re not a big name and you make a movie that no one likes, the chances that you’ll get to make another movie are slim. This is somewhat surprising, though, considering that the movie was a financial hit, but clearly, few producers were eyeing up Derrickson as an appealing new client.
His next film, then, wouldn’t be released until 2012, when he made the horror film Sinister, starring Ethan Hawke. Derrickson’s career has bounced back for good since then, however, with the filmmaker taking on Doctor Strange in 2016, which made Marvel $677.8million. Clearly, The Day The Earth Stood Still didn’t have as catastrophic an impact on his career as he’d initially believed it would.
The same can be said for Reeves, who found himself in “Studio Movie Jail”, as he told Esquire, when the movie was released: “Sometimes I call that ‘The Day My Career Stood Still’… You’re always fighting for a career.”
The actor’s acting roles dried up a bit after that, with further forgettable roles coming with the likes of The Private Lives of Pippa Lee and Henry’s Crime, but in 2014, he landed John Wick, which led to a well-deserved Keanu resurgence.
