He’s never had an easy ride with reviewers — the San Francisco Chronicle’s Peter Hartlaub called Alone in the Dark, “a film so mind-blowingly horrible that it teeters on the edge of cinematic immortality”—and earned the nickname The Raging Boll after challenging his worst critics a “put up or shut up” boxing match.
He knocked out each of his four opponents, landing a blow for anyone who has ever suffered a bad review.
Now he’s done. The release of Rampage: President Down is his swan song, the final film he will direct he says, in part, because his politically charged movies have “no impact.”
“Rampage 3 will be watched on Netflix, DVD or iTunes or whatever,” he says.
“They’ll say, ‘That wonderful movie! I liked it blah, blah, blah,’ then watch Avengers. With streaming everywhere there is just a big wave of movies flooding around and you have no impact.”
“The market is dead,” he adds, “you don’t make any money anymore on movies because the DVD and Blu Ray market worldwide has dropped 80 per cent in the last three years. That is the real reason; I just cannot afford to make movies.”
“I can’t go back to student filmmaking because I have made so many movies in my life, and I can’t make cheaper and cheaper movies at my age. It’s a shame. I would be happy to make movies but it is just not financially profitable.”