Disney has gained so much power, control, and influence over the modern film industry that it is hard to move ahead 7 paces without finding at least 3 that’s been marked by the House of Mouse. The recent acquisition of one of the major seven studios of Hollywood aka 20th Century Fox then led to so many new possibilities that the crowd almost forgot to care for the plans that were caught in the crossfire of the merger war.
One of these possibilities was Marvel and Foxverse finally coming under one studio thus finally uniting the MCU superheroes with the mutants. And one of the films caught in the crossfire was Brad Pitt’s sci-fi magnum opus, Ad Astra.
Ad Astra Director Blames Disney For Film’s Failure
It isn’t rare to find a director in tatters over the alleged assault on their creativity and the destruction of their vision by the producers and financiers who are solely concerned with the profitability and the commercial draw of the project they are pouring so much money into. Underrated cult classics that grow more famous with time are not really a priority for those who survive on making profits off of millions of dollars worth of investments. The Brad Pitt film, Ad Astra was caught somewhere between studio politics and the director’s wish fulfillment – the final product of which was appalling to both the audiences and the film’s director.
As was revealed by the director, James Gray, despite Ad Astra being initially produced at the 20th Century Fox studios, it was later stuck in a post-production limbo over the course of its merger with Disney in 2019, after which “the film stopped being a hundred percent mine.” Gray claimed: “Now, I was very upset about it because, as the writer-director, I felt that my view should win the day.” Brad Pitt, for one, didn’t have much to add to the debate considering how he had merely been a child of a divorce and neither had the authority to sway the studio nor make the director happy.
A Complete Rundown of the Merger Mess and Ad Astra
Director James Gray had been the perfectly formal directorial brains behind the space-adventure drama and presented himself as such while the Brad Pitt starrer was out for its promotional run and press junket interviews. However, once it was done and dusted with, the director did come out guns blazing and torching Disney to ashes for destroying his one shot at the sci-fi masterpiece after it received a mellow reception and critical negativity just as Gray had predicted.
“It was kind of a perfect storm. The birthing of it was so screwed up for reasons that had nothing to do with the movie. New Regency made the film, and they were trying to get it through Fox, and we were talking to Fox people, and then Fox got sold to Disney and folded up, basically. That was a proud studio at 20th Century Fox, and it’s gone. And then you have the Disney group, and that’s a very different M.O., So it was completely screwed up on a corporate level.
Also, with a film that is quite personal, people sometimes see themselves in it and will argue that other things are better. I did not have final cut, so I could not say, ‘I don’t like it. That’s the way it is.’”
Also read: 9 Most Confusing Sci-Fi Movies That Feel Like You Need a Ph.D. in Quantum Physics
Ad Astra currently holds an impressive 83% rating on Rotten Tomatoes despite the harrowing circumstances of its post-production run. However, much to its shame, the audience score only goes as far as 40%. The film also secured a worldwide collection of $135.4 million against a budget of $80-100 million, making it a major commercial disaster.
Ad Astra is currently available for streaming on Disney+.
Source: Vulture
