Turns out, the decision to cancel the sequel to the comedy action movie “Wolfs” starring Brad Pitt and George Clooney was not made by Apple, but by director Jon Watts.
In an interview with Deadline, Watts explained that he “no longer trusts Apple as a creative partner” after the company cancelled the film’s theatrical release.
Recall that the film was originally set to debut on the big screen on September 19, but in August, Apple changed its mind and decided to release it in limited distribution and show it mainly on Apple TV+. As noted at the time by the New York Times, the reason was that the company had “experienced numerous disappointments in distribution” amid high costs of theatrical production.
Interestingly, the strategy of moving to “digital” actually worked well — Doug Lyman’s detective film “The Agitators”, according to Times, became the most popular movie on streaming in the first weeks and brought the company about 50,000 subscriptions to Apple TV+. Even better results were demonstrated by the action movie “Wolfs”, which became the most popular movie ever released on the service.
At the same time, Watts’ decision to “move at the last minute” was shocking and he asked the company not to announce to the audience that he was writing a sequel.
“They ignored my request and still made the announcement about the sequel. I just quietly returned the money they gave me for it. I didn’t want to talk about it because I was proud of the first movie and didn’t want any negativity,” says Watts. “I enjoyed working with Brad and George and I would gladly do it again. But the truth is that Apple didn’t cancel the sequel, I just no longer trusted them as a creative partner”.
Earlier, director Steve McQueen said he was somewhat disappointed that his film “Blitz” was released in limited distribution at the decision of Apple.
Considering the commercial failures of films like “Flower Full Killers” and “Napoleon”, Apple reviewed its spending on film projects and decided to stop screenings in theaters, limiting the budget of “most” of its future releases to $80 million and reducing the quota of theatrical releases to 1-2 films per year.
The movie “Wolfs” tells the story of rival fixers who got one case for two, and have to forget about old grievances for one night. Pitt and Clooney last worked together on the full-length film “Burn After Reading” by Joel and Ethan Coen in 2008, and before that played in Steven Soderbergh’s “Ocean’s Trilogy”. The actors are also involved as executive producers, and on screen they are accompanied by Amy Ryan (“The Office”), who took on the role of a high-ranking official and the fixers’ client.