Deaths, lawsuits, and shutdowns: The “cursed” movie Stephen King called a “bad luck project”
Making movies can be a hugely stressful process. After all, there are so many potential pitfalls, countless variables that can go wrong, and even more moving parts that all need to work smoothly to bring any story to the screen. For Stephen King, though, it seemed like he encountered every single thing that could possibly go wrong on one particular production, leading him to wonder if the entire endeavour was cursed.
In 1982, King published Different Seasons, a collection of four novellas that departed from his usual horror formula. Proving how much of a creative force the author was at that time, three of the four tales wound up being adapted into Hollywood films. ‘Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption’ became, unsurprisingly, The Shawshank Redemption, and ‘The Body’ became Stand By Me. However, the third story, ‘Apt Pupil’, would embark upon a 16-year odyssey to finally make it to the big screen, and to say it was a bumpy ride would be a gross understatement.
‘Apt Pupil’ was a controversial tale from the beginning, but one that was undeniably compelling as well. It followed a 16-year-old Southern California teenager who discovers that his neighbour, Arthur Denker, is actually the notorious Nazi war criminal Kurt Dussander. He befriends the elderly fugitive and blackmails him into telling him stories of the atrocities he committed during the war, but in the process, reawakens Dussander’s latent homicidal appetites.
Soon after Different Seasons was published, producer Richard Kobritz snapped up the rights to ‘Apt Pupil’ and immediately approached veteran English star James Mason about playing Dussander. However, in a harbinger of the turmoil to come, the 75-year-old North by Northwest star suffered a heart attack and died in July 1984, before production could get going. Then, in an even more unlikely turn of events, the second actor that Kobritz sought for the role, Richard Burton, also died of an intracerebral haemorrhage on August 5th at the age of 58.
After this terrible run of luck, the film finally began shooting in 1987 with Nicol Williamson as Dussander and Ricky Schroder as the mixed-up teen. The film was shot for 10 weeks under the direction of Alan Bridges (The Shooting Party) before financial woes at the production company financing the film forced a shutdown.
Bridges was able to assemble 40 minutes of usable footage at that point, but when the movie was finally cleared to start filming again a year later, the director realised it would be impossible. The 17-year-old Schroder had aged so dramatically in that year that it wouldn’t have been feasible for him to play the role anymore. So, to everyone’s disappointment, the project was abandoned.
For the next eight years, the future of ‘Apt Pupil’ as a big screen prospect seemed as grim as the subject matter. However, when the rights reverted to King, he soon found himself fielding a pitch from The Usual Suspects director Bryan Singer to helm a new version of the movie. Singer had read the novella when he was only 19, and had waited patiently for the film to arrive in ’87, but it never did. So, when King gave him the go-ahead to mount a new adaptation, he signed up Ian McKellan and Brad Renfro to star, and set a start date in the summer of ’96.
Once again, though, Apt Pupil‘s status as a “bad luck project” reared its ugly head. Producer Scott Rudin and his company Spelling Pictures backed out of financing the movie, with Rudin telling Entertainment Weekly that the differences he had with Singer were “somewhat financial, somewhat creative, somewhat chemical. To force everybody to do it together seemed pointless.”
At that point, even Singer lamented, “This project is just cursed,” but to his delight, it was bailed out by Mike Medavoy’s Phoenix Pictures. Medavoy eventually became the producer who finally dragged the movie over the finishing line, but there was one more hurdle to overcome during production.
On April 2nd, 1997, Singer filmed a controversial scene in which a group of showering teenage boys in a high school locker room are reimagined as Jewish prisoners in a gas chamber. It was filmed at a real-life Middle School, and two weeks after the shoot, a lawsuit was filed in which a 14-year-old extra claimed Singer had forced him and other boys to be completely naked for the scene. Accusations were made that this was done for the openly gay Singer’s sexual gratification. Two other boys later supported the allegation, but the suit was settled out of court for an undisclosed fee.
At the time, the LA District Attorney’s office stated, “The suspects were intent on completing a professional film as quickly and efficiently as possible. There is no indication of lewd or abnormal sexual intent.” However, the fact that Singer had his directing career derailed decades later by numerous sexual assault allegations made against him casts this entire unsavoury incident in a whole new light.
