Gerard Butler’s environmental disaster movie Geostorm is in a perfect storm of its own. Most of the time, when news leaks out that a film is undergoing reshoots, a bigger deal is made of it than it actually deserves. The two big ones this year were Suicide Squad and Rogue One, which both seemed to have changed huge parts of their stories months before their release. Geostorm is the latest movie to enter reshoot hell, but that’s not all: it’s also getting a new director.
At first supposed to come out this October, the movie’s release date was pushed back to January 2017 and then to October 2017 after early test screenings showed that there was room for improvement. So, reshoots galore. According to The Hollywood Reporter, they’re spending $15 million on the reshoots and actually cutting a few characters completely, and adding in a female scientist, effectively ending sexism. It was also going to be the directorial debut of producer and screenwriter Dean Devlin, but those plans fell through. Now, the film has been picked up by Danny Cannon, whose name might be familiar as the director of Sylvester Stallone’s Judge Dredd, and Jerry Bruckheimer, of Pirates of the Caribbean fame, is now producing.
It seems like a lot of effort for a movie that’ll probably fall somewhere in the Olympus/London Has Fallen quality range, but when you hear what it’s about, you’ll understand why this project needs to be saved. Here’s Geostorm’s bonkers plot, according to THR:
Butler plays a man who heads into space to prevent climate-controlling satellites from creating a man-made storm of epic proportions. At the same time, he and his estranged brother learn of a plot to assassinate the president.
This is like three or four movies all balled up into one, and while, let’s be honest, it’s not going to be the next Citizen Kane, the ambition here is admirable. Gerard Butler has already saved America and London. Next stop: the whole world.