Back in 1997, Paul W.S. Anderson’s film Event Horizon was considered a flop. Released in an era when the Alien series was in a creative lull and the big space movies were upbeat and life-affirming franchises that began with “Star” and ended with either “Trek” or “Wars,” audiences weren’t ready for a horror film set in space. Especially not a film that featured gruesome and vivid imagery of a man who had gouged out his own eyes, or images of a blood orgy, or an ending that was both open-ended and down-spirited. Event Horizon was panned by critics and only pulled in $42 million on a $60 million budget, but one fan reassured Anderson that the time would come when he would consider it his finest achievement, and that fan was future Guardians of the Galaxy star Kurt Russell.
In a new interview with Variety, director Paul W.S. Anderson discussed how dispirited he was with Event Horizon’s failure, and how much the studio hated it. According to Anderson, executives at Paramount, which also produces Star Trek, reacted as if Event Horizon hurt the franchise by slandering space itself. They forced a lot of cuts on the film, trimming it from its original three hour run-time.
And now, 25 years later, the film, led by a stellar pair of costars in Laurence Fishburne and Sam Neill, is considered a cult-classic with a large following of fans. As Anderson explained to Variety, Kurt Russell surprised him with his support of the film as they were preparing to make his next, Soldier, together:
“When the movie was first released, it did okay business, but it wasn’t what I had hoped for it. I was going on to make a movie with Kurt Russell (1998’s sci-fi action film “Soldier”) and I showed him “Event Horizon.” He said, “Paul, in 20 years time, that’s the movie you’re going be really glad you made.” He was right! I thought it was very generous of Kurt, considering I was about to go make a movie with him. The film was striking. It didn’t pull its punches and it was true to what it wanted to do. We didn’t have a huge amount of time to cut trailers and do posters and do a very elaborate campaign, but over time people found the movie. It’s been a wonderful experience to see the audience for it grow.”
A 25th anniversary edition Event Horizon Steelbook is now available for purchase.
