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Event Horizon Director Recalls Paramount's Hilarious First Reaction To Movie
Audiences weren't the only ones left shocked by it as Event Horizon director Paul W.S. Anderson recalls Paramount's hilarious first reaction to seeing the movie. The 1997 sci-fi horror film centered on the crew of the space rescue vessel Lewis and Clark as they answer a distress call from the titular spaceship, which had vanished for seven years and has mysteriously returned in Neptune's orbit. While venturing onboard the Event Horizon, the crew discover an experimental engine that was used to create a rift in space and time to a horrific alternate dimension.
Sam Neill led the cast of Event Horizon alongside Laurence Fishburne, Kathleen Quinlan, Joely Richardson, Richard T. Jones, Jack Noseworthy, Jason Isaacs, Sean Pertwee and Peter Marinker. HItting theaters in Summer 1997, the sci-fi horror pic was largely considered a failure by the studio, only grossing $42 million against its $60 million production budget and scoring generally mixed-to-negative reviews from critics, who praised its visual effects, but felt there was nothing more to the film. In spite of this, Event Horizon has gone on to enjoy a cult following for said visuals and Anderson's stylish direction.
In honor of the film's 25th anniversary, Variety caught up with Paul W.S. Anderson to discuss Event Horizon. When asked about how the studio responded to the film, the director recalled Paramount's hilarious first reaction to his sci-fi horror movie, negatively comparing it to their tentpole Star Trek franchise. See what Anderson shared below:
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“Someone actually said to me, ‘We’re the studio that makes Star Trek!’ They weren’t only horrified by my movie; they felt I was besmirching ‘Star Trek’ somehow, because I was also in space and doing all this terrible stuff.”
Given the blood-soaked nature of its story, it's understandable Paramount would find themselves shocked by Event Horizon upon first seeing the film. Anderson had purposely sought to make a hard-R horror film following Mortal Kombat's box office success, which propelled him into the spotlight, though turned him off from making PG-13 movies at the time. This PG-13 aversion would largely carry over in the rest of Anderson's filmography, having written all of and directed most of the Resident Evil movie franchise starring his wife Milla Jovovich and 2006's Death Race, only occasionally returning to the more tame rating for 2004's Alien vs. Predator, 2011's The Three Musketeers, 2014's Pompeii and 2020's Monster Hunter.
As humorous as Paramount's first reaction to seeing the film was, it nearly derailed Anderson's vision for Event Horizon as they forced him to edit much of the gore down and trim it from his original 130-minute cut to the released 96-minute version. Despite Anderson's desire to release the deleted footage in a director's cut, including two alternate endings, the excised material has largely been lost to time, with the filmmaker confirming the unlikelihood of it coming to be multiple times over the years. Audiences can revisit Event Horizon in honor of its 25th anniversary with the film streaming on Fubo now.
