The streets of Hollywood are, obviously, littered with unmade, overdeveloped scripts, but it’s relatively rare for a film to have the plug pulled once a film’s been given the greenlight — the more money that gets spent in pre-production, the more disappears down the drain, never to be seen again, if something doesn’t get made and released. Which is why it’s a fairly big deal that Universal just shut down work on “Cartel,” a Josh Brolin-starring drugs drama that was only five weeks away from shooting down in Mexico City.
The Universal/Imagine co-production, a remake of the 1993 Italian film “La scorta,” was set to be directed by Asger Leth, who was behind the now sadly topical Haiti documentary “Ghosts of Cite Soleil,” and had been in the works for a few years now. Sean Penn was initially set to star, but took a sabbatical from acting, leading Brolin to step in late last year. Now, the studio are citing a rising budget and difficulties with shooting in Mexico City for the canning of the project. The last time this happened at Universal was when Antoine Fuqua’s take on “American Gangster” was scrapped, leading to pay-or-play cheques being written to the film’s stars, Denzel Washington and Benicio Del Toro. Deadline aren’t sure if Brolin was on a similar deal, but as it’s only his second studio lead, we’d be very surprised if he was.
And therein, we suspect, lies one of the real reasons for the cancellation of the project. Brolin’s untested as a box-office draw; “No Country For Old Men” was sold on its prestige, rather than him, while “W.” underperformed by most standards. Things may change after his lead in the comic book western “Jonah Hex” this summer, but considering the poisonous buzz on that picture, we wouldn’t be so sure. More importantly, however, Universal have been burned in a big way in the last few years by their expensive star-driven adult dramas: “Duplicity,” “State of Play,” Public Enemies,” “Funny People,” “Green Zone” and “Repo Men” have all failed to meet expectations for the company, and all were toplined by far more established names than Brolin.
We’re not convinced of the argument that there’s no longer a mainstream audience for adult drama — “Shutter Island” has already taken in nearly $250 million worldwide, for example. We actually like most of the Universal films above, to varying degrees, but all were mismarketed, and all had major problems that perhaps prevented them from picking up the consistently strong reviews that tend to bring in older crowds. We sincerely hope that the canning of “Cartel” doesn’t signify a future for the studio consisting entirely of sequels to “The Fast & The Furious.”