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Nicholas Cage, Anton Yelchin, writer Paul Schrader and Nicolas Winding Refn protest against their upcoming film ‘Dying of the Light’ based on artistic issues. They launched a Facebook campaign against the film.
Nicholas Cage has had controversies about the movies that he has acted in or he has produced but this time he is on the other side of the controversy. Cage is protesting against his own upcoming film, Dying of the Light. The film is about an aging FBI agent Evan Lake, who is losing his sight and is ordered to leave the force. Just then his protégé uncovers the existence of Evan’s nemesis Banir. Evans embarks in a mission withhis protégé to bring Banir to justice.
The film’s story sounds exciting and had originally planned to cast Harrison Ford and Channing Tatum but the production felt better with casting Nicholas Cage and Anton Yelchin because of Ford’s and Tatum’s busy schedules.
After the production finished shooting, Cage and Schrader admitted that they were proud of their work. Nicholas Cage loved how well he had acted in the movie and Schrader was happy with what he had written and made.
All seemed to be going well before the film reached the editing boards. According to the production’s Gary Hirsch, the team wanted to make changes in the movie that Schrader didn’t approve of.
He insisted on keeping the original material and that is where the conflict began. Schrader left the project because of his disagreement with the production of Grindstone.
He was accompanied by Nicholas Cage and the film’s executive producer Winding Refn. According to Refn, Nicholas and Paul were proud of what they had done and they did not approve of the ideas the production wanted for the film.
Schrader says that he was not consulted on the, reediting, scoring final mixing of the movie. Hirsch said that Schrader’s own direction deviated from the script he wrote. The film was completely different from what was originally decided to be made.
The four celebrities have launched a Facebook campaign against the movie. Schrader wrote the following statement on his Facebook page:
“We lost the battle. ‘Dying of the Light’, a film I wrote and directed, was taken away from me, reedited, scored and mixed without my input. Yesterday Grindstone (a division of Lionsgate) released the poster and the trailer. They are available on line. Here we are, Nick Cage, Anton Yelchin, Nic Refn and myself, wearing our ‘non-disparagement’ T shirts. The non-disparagement clause in an artist’s contract gives the owners of the film the right to sue the artist should the owner deem anything the artist has said about the film to be ‘derogatory’. I have no comment on the film or others connected with the picture.”
Schrader, Cage, Refn and Yelchin wear ‘non-disparagement’ T shirts. According to a clause, a non disparagement is the part of an actors contract in which he could not say anything derogatory about the movie otherwise they are liable to a lawsuit.
They all appeared on Facebook supporting the same T-shirt which are declarative of the message, “No publicity issued by artist or lender, whether personal publicity or otherwise, shall contain derogatory mention of company, the picture, or the services of artist or others connected with the picture.”
So they have refused to say anything derogatory about the movie to avoid lawsuit. It would be interesting to see how the movie is responded to by the audience after this protest by its own team. Grindstone has already released the poster and the trailer for the movie and it is available online.
