It seems life in a world without tax loopholes is a hard one if you're a german film-maker. Yep, our old friend Uwe Boll is back in the news, but thankfully it's not the announcement of a new movie, but the story is just about as absurd as anything Herr Boll has subjected the world to thus far.
You may be lucky enough to not be aware that earlier this year Uwe released Bloodrayne in theatres. It was uniformly awful as all his movies are, but it seems Mr Boll isn't too enamoured with the fact that now that his precious german tax loophole is closed, if his movie fails to make money, it just flat out fails to make money. That's right, no more tax rebates or write-offs, just a whole lot of angry investors looking for their money back.
So when a director's third movie in a row to be critically panned and to lose a fortune fails, who do you blame?
That's right, you guessed it; Billy Zane.
Billy Zane starred in Bloodrayne but also helped produce the movie through his Romar Entertainment company. According to the guys over at Cinematical Boll claims that he made an agreement with Romar to show Bloodrayne on over 2000 screens. It actually showed on only 980.
However, despite this and despite a budget of well over $25 million, Bloodrayne made only $2.4 million domestically and $1.2 million worldwide. That's the kind of failure that makes Joss Whedon sleep a little more soundly at night when thinking about Serenity. However, Uwe isn't the kind of guy who takes failure lying down and he isn't the kind of guy, if you've ever read his interviews, who believes in taking personal responsibility for his actions.
Even if his claims are true, how Boll plans to prove he suffered significant losses from this basted turkey not being shown to over 1000 more empty theatres God only knows, but he needs money to pay his task-masters back home somehow and what better way to make money in america than to rely on a good old-fashioned lawsuit.
With a little luck the judge with throw this nonsense out, Boll will be declared bankrupt, nobody will touch Dungeon Siege with a bargepole and the world will be a happier place with Paul W.S. Anderson reclaiming his rightful title as the worst film-maker in the world today.
