The movie Whoopi Goldberg was forced to star in
Such an accomplished actor in so many ways that she became only the tenth person in history to win the EGOT, Whoopi Goldberg has nonetheless starred in her fair amount of dreck, with one completely bizarre fever dream standing head and shoulders above the rest.
Dinosaurs were suddenly cooler than they’d been in forever in the aftermath of Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park becoming the top-earning movie of all time in the summer of 1993, and the buddy cop genre was as prevalent as it had ever been, which was more than enough to set a lightbulb off in somebody’s head in Hollywood.
Enter 1995’s Theodore Rex, a sci-fi cop caper that saw Goldberg’s human detective Katie Coltrane partnered up with an anthropomorphised dinosaur in a futuristic world where the extinct prehistoric creatures don’t just continue to thrive but have been co-existing with humans to such a level they’re now working the same jobs and being drawn into the same mysteries.
In this case, it leads them directly to Armin Mueller-Stahl’s Elizar Kane, an unscrupulous billionaire who wants to kill everyone regardless of whether they’ve got skin or scales, with the intention of ushering in a new ice age. Somebody thought it was a good pitch for a film, but that person couldn’t have been more wrong.
It wasn’t even released in cinemas, either, with Theodore Rex setting a record as the most expensive feature that was sent straight to video. Goldberg knew she wasn’t onto a winner and actively tried to extricate herself from the verbal agreement she’d made, only to end up swallowing her pride and doing it with the aid of some extra financial incentives and the looming threat of court.
After attempting to back out, producer Richard Gilbert Abramson ended up slapping Goldberg with a $20million lawsuit, which panicked her into reaching a settlement. Theodore Rex was back on with its original star, who saw her deal sweetened to the tune of an additional $2m, bringing her salary up to a cool $7m in total.
Funnily enough, she’s since named it as the only movie of her career that she wishes she’d never made. “Don’t ask me why I did it, I didn’t want to,” she told Folha de S.Paulo, but it’s readily apparent that the threat of litigation and potential breach of contract was what twisted her arm into committing.
As well as harbouring eternal regrets, Theodore Rex would also secure Goldberg a nomination for ‘Worst Actress’ at the Golden Raspberry Awards, but even to this day, she can barely comprehend how or why such a disastrous undertaking has become something of a cult favourite. According to her, one of the producers on her talk show The View “loves it,” something she finds to be “crazy” for obvious reasons.
