Since Lee Daniels' The Butler made $100 million and generated Oscar buzz this summer Lee Daniels finds himself with a plethora of Hollywood cache.
Daniels’ doesn’t make films his audience is clamoring for. Rather he makes subversive films that resonate with him personally. For example, much of The Butler's subplot was reflective of the strained relationship between Daniels and his own father.
You’d hate to see a filmmaker use up his newfound cache as a filmmaker quicker than MC Hammer, but it seems like he's on boom or bust path.
His next prospective film is a gay action-hero film adaption which is pretty progressive even for Hollywood and wouldn’t sound so bad if it weren’t for the stated reasoning behind his odd casting choices.
Via Out.com:
The always ambitious Daniels, who is riding high on the critical acclaim and box office receipts of the Oscar-worthy Lee Daniels' The Butler, has revealed in an exclusive interview with Out magazine, that he's developing an "interracial love affair action movie" with an interracial gay couple. According to Daniels, think of it as a gay "Mr. and Mrs. Smith, but the two good-looking guys as the action heroes." The twist? "We don't find out they're gay until the end of the movie," he explains.
He went on to reveal that, "Alex Pettyfer is in it, [but] I have to find the right black guy opposite him. He's so hot, isn't he? So hot. And so aware of his hotness in a way that's so…I love him to death."
I remember the first time I saw I Am Number Four starring Pettyfer a few years ago. Fortunately, there was no I Am Number Five. Since then I haven’t seen Pettyfer either. Why’s that? Because he couldn’t act his way out of a box and his career as a leading man was DOA.
Lee Daniels saw something different apparently. That’s troublesome considering both of their previous track records of shaky films before they collaborated in The Butler.
