A movie simply called Gore sounds awesome. Get me Eli Roth, the finest practical effects dudes in town, a couple of twenty-somethings playing high-schoolers and a gallon or five of stage blood and we’ve got ourselves a film! Wait, what’s that? It’s a biopic of Gore Vidal? Starring Kevin Spacey? And contains scenes with Spacey having sex with young men? Uh, you know what – hard pass.
That’s probably the same mindset that’s reportedly led Netflix to indefinitely shelve Kevin Spacey’s last movie, correctly judging that audiences probably don’t want to see him getting down with young men precisely as he faces multiple charges for doing the same in real life.
This comes as Netflix completely divests themselves of their relationship with the one-time respected character actor. The most obvious consequence of this was them firing Spacey from House of Cards and making Robin Wright the star, but putting an apparently completed movie on ice is one hell of a financial loss, even for a company as cash-rich as Netflix. In fact, their split has reportedly resulted in a $39 million write-down on Spacey-related content.
BuzzFeed’s reporting that Gore faithfully dramatized its subject’s sexual proclivities, leading to scenes of Spacey having graphic sex with young man and transgender sex workers, which could only be in bad taste given the charges leveled against him. Based on that, it seems unlikely that the movie will ever see the light of the day.
It’s unknown whether Kevin Spacey himself will suffer the same fate, though. He’s no doubt focused on fighting those accusations in the UK and USA right now, but could he ever feasibly make a comeback? Well, stranger things have happened in Hollywood and I wouldn’t rule out him making a return to acting in some form or other, but I think his career as an A-list headliner is well and truly over.
Oh well, at least it means they can now make a gross-out horror film called Gore.
