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Freaking unbelievable that they are going to make that film with Travolta.
For anyone who likes such esoterica, I'll relay something I find extremely fascinating that happened a few hours ago, related to this thread. I hadn't read the thread yet. I was bored out of my mind and looked to see if there was anything new on Pay-Per-View and I saw a quick description of a bank heist movie, one of my favorite genres. It was called "Marauders".
There were no reviews or stars, so I knew it was probably going to be horrible. And they were charging 8 dollars, a double insult. But, I thought--what the hell, let's try it anyways.
So a couple hours ago I watched Marauders. Well at least I tried to. Bruce Willis was in there so I thought, maybe at least it will have some redeeming action or SOMETHING! I had to keep fast forwarding through it and eventually just abandoned it completely. That's how bad it was.
But there was something that really bothered the hell out of me (besides the abysmal writing and performances) which was the casting of the FBI Agents. They didn't look or act like FBI agents. It was a joke! So after I turned the film off, i Googled that movie and some of the cast to see how freaking weird it was that they cast a guy who looked like a steroid-pumping, burnt out, 325 pound, alcoholic body builder as the co-starring FBI agent. Hideous casting, you have no idea, LOL Well here, look at the guy! LOLOL
FBI AGENTS DON'T LOOK LIKE THAT!
THEY DON'T LOOK LIKE THAT EITHER.
HE STILL LOOKS LIKE A STUPID MEATHEAD, EVEN WITH FAKE "FBI GLASSES"
I was just mystified why anyone would ever miscast so badly. Then I saw (Google) that he is a famous WWE wrestling star. So they apparently thought they would be able to sell movie tickets by just jamming him into the film anywhere. Bad idea, really bad.
I kept doing a little detective work to discover how that movie even got made (financed).
AHA!!!!!!
It was a special financing deal being offered by the city of Cincinnati. I won't go into the particulars but it can be worth 10's of millions of dollars of "rebates" to the production company to film there.
So THAT explains how Travolta (like former action star Bruce Willis) got the starring role in the Gotti movie. They needed some "names" to close the deal with Cincinnati to close the financing deal. People that work for the city of Cincinnati don't know that Bruce Willis doesn't mean anything to attracting box-office any more. But on paper it SOUNDS so good to amateurs if they have a "movie star" or a "WWE Wrestling Champion", LOL. Seriously, that's how some deals get made with wanna-be film financing sources.
So, in film parlance, let's cut to the chase. The movie is being driven by the money rather than the other way around. So you end up with Marauders, a complete disaster. Same will happen with Gotti. Guaranteed, it will bomb in theaters. It probably won't even play in theaters, it'll go straight to video just like Marauders.
If you read this far, I am shocked. But having worked in film I find this kind of stuff fascinating. Especially since I just looked all this up not even two hours ago, before reading this thread on Travolta.