It’s still hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that River Phoenix was only twenty-three when he died. Stand By Me and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade are two of my all-time favorite movies, and Phoenix is a big part of the reason why. Who knows where his career would be at if the up-and-coming star didn’t die in 1993. But it seems like the movie Phoenix was filming when he died might finally get a release nearly twenty years later, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Director George Sluizer (who directed both the 1988 and 1993 versions of The Vanishing) was working on Dark Blood with Phoenix when the actor died. In the film, Phoenix played “a hermit living in the desert on a nuclear testing site as he waits for the end of the world. When a Hollywood jet-set couple (played by Judy Davis and Jonathan Pryce) arrives to find shelter, he begins a troubled relationship with the wife.” Of course, Phoenix died before the film was completed and Sluizer shelved the footage.
But Sluizer — who hasn’t made a film since 2002 — says that it is possible for him to complete the film with the footage already shot and only needs to record a voiceover for the Phoenix character to complete it. Obviously Sluizer’s first choice for that part is Phoenix’s younger brother, Joaquin, himself an acclaimed actor.
We’ve seen revived projects like this before, such as Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, which was completed after the death of lead actor Heath Ledger by utilizing other actors, and Plan 9 From Outer Space, in which Ed Wood utilized random footage of Bela Lugosi to create a movie that has been made fun of since its release.. But I don’t think we’ve ever seen a film starring a dead actor go for this long. I’m all for the release if the film is complete enough to do so — and I imagine Joaquin Phoenix wouldn’t involve himself if he thought his brother was being exploited, so I guess it hinges on that.
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