The Bill Murray movie that was deleted from history: “Three years flushed down the toilet”
It can’t be a nice feeling for an actor to sign on for a movie, put the work in, and then be left completely helpless as it falls into the Hollywood abyss. It’s bad enough if it happens once, but for Bill Murray, it happened twice.
The actor and comedian’s first brush with the perils of unreleased films came in 1984 when Nothing Lasts Forever, Tom Schiller’s star-studded sci-fi dramedy, was finished but didn’t see the inside of a cinema. The shelved picture was never screened in theatres or on home video, but because there’s always a way around these things, it eventually made its way online before being hit with a copyright claim.
Nothing Lasts Forever has been shown several times in a public setting since the studio decided to pull the plug without an explanation, but the same can’t be said for BOO: Bureau of Otherworldly Operations, an animated supernatural fantasy that DreamWorks had spent almost $100million to make and handed a summer 2015 release date before deleting the entire thing from history.
Helmed by Tony Leondis, the picture was the sort of thing that seemed destined to make bank at the box office, especially when it hailed from the studio behind Shrek, How to Train Your Dragon, and Kung Fu Panda. The story unfolded at the titular agency, a government organisation that protects the mortal realm from hauntings, with two humans assisting their spectral allies in fighting a shared enemy.
Seth Rogen and Melissa McCarthy were announced as the leads, with Matt Bomer, Rashida Jones, Jennifer Coolidge, and Octavia Spencer joining them. In a casting coup that would no doubt allow him to poke fun at his Ghostbusters baggage, Murray was set as the villainous Addison Drake, with Leondis calling him “the perfect actor to bring this character to life.”
In January 2015, with the release date months away and BOO eying the finish line, the movie was mothballed. “Three years just gets flushed down the toilet,” an animator who worked on the film told Yahoo. “I would say 60% of it was completely animated.”
The very same month, DreamWorks’ animation division revealed plans to eliminate around 500 jobs, cutting one movie per year from the schedule, and shuttering Pacific Design Images, an animation house that was working on BOO, which caused a devastating ripple effect across the company.
“There were a handful of projects, including BOO, that either got put on hold or put on the shelf right around the same time,” the animator explained. “That was the biggest blindside blow. I joined DreamWorks because I was told it was the safest place in the industry, it’s where you’ll work for the next five years, and then this happens.”
After a couple of high-profile misfires at the box office, the head honchos were wary of having another expensive flop on their hands, so the decision was made to scrap BOO completely and erase it from the history books. On the other hand, Murray’s biggest voice-only roles were in the terrible Garfield movies, and Leondis went on to direct The Emoji Movie, so maybe DreamWorks had a point.
