Over his two-decade long career in Hollywood, Gerard Butler has made a name for himself as an action star, from Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life to 300. In 2016, he was seen playing Set in Gods of Egypt and reprising Mike Banning in London Has Fallen. Butler's next project is the environmental disaster movie Geostorm, which shot in late 2014, but has been dealing with behind-the-scenes issues for the last 12 months. As a result, Geostorm recently underwent reshoots, and the production brought in Jerry Bruckheimer and Danny Cannon to help out.
According to THR, Skydance Media is spending "up to $15 million" on the Geostorm reshoots, which come after a test screening in December 2015 was met with tepid response. Described by the studio as "pick-ups," apparently the reason for the hefty cost is because it's expensive to bring the cast back together two years after principal photography concluded, although some of the movie's characters have reportedly been eliminated entirely thanks to script changes. Geostorm's director, longtime screenwriter and producer Dean Devlin, was unavailable to direct the reshoots, so instead, Skydance recruited Danny Cannon to direct them and Jerry Bruckheimer to oversee them as a producer. THR's sources say the reshoots occurred from December 3-14 in Louisiana, and Devlin remains its main director, which also served as his directorial debut.
Geostorm will follow Gerard Butler's Jake, a man who heads into space to prevent climate-controlling satellites from creating a storm "of epic proportions," while back on Earth, his estranged brother discovers a plot to assassinate the President of the United States. Some of the changes moviegoers can look forward to are a new female scientist being added and the role of Jake's wife, Olivia, originally played by Vikings star Katheryn Winnick, being recast.
Although dedicating time for reshoots is more common nowadays with major blockbusters, what Geostorm went through is clearly something much bigger. It's noted in the article that Skydance wants to use Geostorm "to transform the company from a film financier to a full-fledged creative production company," which they previously tried with Terminator Genisys, but that obviously didn't work out. While we won't know until late next year whether the reshoots made Geostorm better, at least the men tackling them have plenty of experience in the industry. Jerry Bruckheimer has been a director/producer in movies and television for over four decades, with his notable projects including the Pirates of the Caribbean series, the National Treasure series, Black Hawk Down and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Danny Cannon's directing credits include Judge Dredd and I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, and he is currently an executive producer on the Fox series Gotham.
Geostorm is currently slated to hit theaters on October 20, 2017. Let us know if Jerry Bruckheimer and Danny Cannon's involvement make you any more interested in this movie in the comments below.
