Whilst filmmaker Michael Mann’s career is dotted with many highs like “Heat,” “The Insider” and “Collateral”, there’s also a small handful that didn’t work out.
1983’s supernatural thriller “The Keep” was a famously troubled production and commercial flop mostly notable these days for a mythical 210-minute unreleased director’s cut compared to the studio hacked-to-pieces 96-minute theatrical cut.
Since then, his only real outright flop has been 2015’s thriller “Blackhat” starring Chris Hemsworth as an imprisoned computer hacker released to help track down cyber-terrorists. That film scored poor/mixed reviews and only $19.7 million in worldwide box office from a $70 million budget.
In a recent interview with Variety, Mann himself takes full responsibility for the failure of “Blackhat”:
“It’s my responsibility. The script was not ready to shoot. The subject may have been ahead of the curve because there were a number of people who thought this was all fantasy. Wrong. Everything is stone-cold accurate.”
Mann adds there are films he has made where he wouldn’t change a frame, and “Blackhat” isn’t one of those – which is why he recut the film for a 2016 Brooklyn Academy of Music retrospective.
He’s also not above recutting other, better-received works: “I’ve revised ‘Last of the Mohicans’ three times, and now it’s shorter than the original.”
Eight years later, Mann finally returns to feature filmmaking with his “Ferrari” biopic, which is set to premiere at this year’s Venice Film Festival ahead of a December release.
