‘War of the Worlds’ Producer Defends Ice Cube Film After Disastrous Reviews
A creative voice behind last year’s Ice Cube film War of the Worlds is offering his thoughts about the movie’s inauspicious critical response.
Timur Bekmambetov, the filmmaker known for 2008’s Wanted and this year’s Chris Pratt-led Mercy, took part in a Reddit AMA on Thursday to promote LifeHack, which he produced. Focusing on a crypto heist, director Ronan Corrigan’s thriller hits theaters next week after premiering last year at SXSW.
Among the questions posed to Bekmambetov were multiple queries about him having produced War of the Worlds, which hit Prime Video in July and loosely adapted H.G. Wells’ classic sci-fi novel about an alien invasion. Starring Ice Cube, Eva Longoria and Clark Gregg, director Rich Lee’s movie was critically eviscerated and currently holds a meager 4 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It also collected five of the six Razzie Awards for which it was nominated, including the dubious distinction of the year’s worst picture.
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In response to a question about how he felt to have worked on the project, Bekmambetov wrote, “The criticism of War of the Worlds didn’t surprise me. I’ll take three weeks at number one at Amazon Prime over a good review any day. Always have.”
Additionally, a different individual’s question about the film — this one simply asking, “War of the Worlds — why?” — led Bekmambetov to quip, “LifeHack is my reparation for The War of the Worlds.”
In September, Ice Cube explained to streamer Kai Cenat that the film dealt with production challenges, which included shooting in 2020 amid the pandemic. The actor plays a surveillance expert who has a lot on his plate when aliens attack.
“We shot it in 15 days, and it was during the pandemic,” Ice Cube said at the time. “So the director wasn’t in there. None of the actors was in there. This was the only way we could really shoot the movie.”
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