How to bankrupt a studio in one easy step: John Travolta’s bizarre ode to Scientology
If it weren’t for Tom Cruise, then John Travolta would comfortably be the most high-profile Scientologist in Hollywood, but at least the Mission: Impossible star hasn’t gone out of his way to try and ram the merits of the organisation down the throats of the general public. Well, not in the post-Oprah era, at least.
According to former figures firmly entrenched at the top end of the group, there was more than a hint of jealousy on Travolta’s part towards his A-list contemporary being the poster child of mainstream Scientology, which may have partly inspired his decision to back what was effectively a blockbuster propaganda movie that sought to do for L. Ron Hubbard’s teaching what Star Wars did for sci-fi.
Written by the founder himself, the author and Scientology figurehead had sent Travolta an autographed copy of Battlefield Earth when it was first published in 1982 in the hopes the actor would turn it into a major event picture. Even though his stock continued slipping downwards throughout the rest of the decade, and he wasn’t in a position to do so, the Academy Award nominee always harboured the ambitions to make his overlord’s dream a reality.
Thanks to Pulp Fiction, Travolta embarked on a resurgence that saw his star shine brighter than it had in a long time, and it can’t be a coincidence his plans to adapt Battlefield Earth into an epic spacefaring adventure filtered out the year after Tarantino’s masterpiece was released. Having already made magic together, the comeback kid even wanted independent cinema’s newest trailblazer to direct.
A fanciful idea at best, Travolta was so confident in the material he even described Battlefield Earth as “like Star Wars, only better” in public. Fittingly, then, when he struggled to find a nameworthy director to take the reins, he ended up selecting Roger Christian as the ideal man for the job, with his most recent gig shooting the second unit of George Lucas’ The Phantom Menace. With a leading man and director in place and confidence running high, Travolta siphoned millions of his own dollars into the project as one of its producers, and it was all systems go.
Presumably, what he didn’t take into account was the chance Battlefield Earth would turn out to be one of the worst movies ever made, which it was. A box office failure and critical pariah, Travolta’s ode to Scientology would win seven Golden Raspberry Awards, including ‘Worst Picture’, ‘Worst Director’, and ‘Worst Screenplay’, leaving him with no other choice but to quietly abandon any plans of a sequel.
There was the obligatory controversy, too, with non-profit group F.A.C.T. issuing a warning that the film “may contain sophisticated subliminal advertising designed by the cult Scientology, to recruit viewers
into their cult and influence them to reject psychiatry and other mental health organizations”. That may not have been the case, but Travolta still failed spectacularly at convincing the cinemagoing public that anything to do with the organisation was worth checking out, paying to see, or paying any attention to.
Incredibly, the worst was still to come, and not only because the star and producer’s career would arguably never recover from such a well-publicised debacle. It eventually transpired that studio Franchise Pictures had deliberately and fraudulently inflated the budget of Battlefield Earth by over $30million to pull a fast one over its partners to save itself money, which saw fellow production house Intertainment sue and end up being awarded $121m in damages, forcing Franchise into bankruptcy and oblivion, putting the exclamation mark on one of the biggest and most vainglorious failures the business has ever seen.
