Keanu Reeves gets canned

By Joshua Tyler Nov 16, 2005, 20:53 GMT

Jamie Foxx in Rob Cohen\'s \'Stealth\'

After a string of failures, flops, and tortured, overly expensive productions, Sony Pictures is restructuring. For them, restructuring means firing Keanu Reeves

According to an article in the LA Times, Sony is in trouble, ‘Hitch’ is their only successful movie released this year. Their biggest failure so far was Rob Cohen’s ‘Stealth’, a bad movie about futuristic fighter pilots and the unnecessary killing of Jamie Foxx. The movie tanked, and tanked hard, costing them a lot of money. Things didn’t get much better this past weekend when they released ‘Zathura’, a $65 million dollar family flick that only opened at number 2 with $14 million and will likely disappear from theaters in a week or so, buried under more notable big budgeters like the next ‘Harry Potter’. 2005’s been a bad year for Sony, and as a result they’re reporting a $57.2 million loss.

The big news in all of this, is that as part of their risk-reducing strategy they’re unemploying Keanu Reeves and director Rob Cohen. Cohen had been planning to direct a new ‘Sinbad’ adventure called ‘The 8th Voyage of Sinbad’ with Keanu attached in the title role. It was planned as a hugely budgeted, spectacle adventure flick, one that already had a lot of buzz attached to it. But now, Sony has pulled the plug on Sinbad’s next voyage, and officially killed the project.

The death of the film probably has a lot to do with the financial failure of Cohen’s ‘Stealth’, though in the past Rob has been a proven moneymaker. But in Hollywood it’s what have you done for me lately land, and lately Cohen has been costing Sony Pictures money.

Sony’s new run and hide strategy should have no impact on any of their other big films scheduled for release in the remainder of this year. ‘Memoirs of a Geisha’, ‘Rent’, and the outrageously expensive ‘Fun with Dick and Jane’ will get their chance to dig Sony out of the hole they’ve fallen in.