When Films Fall Victim To Bad Timing

A look at what happens when movies and real life events collide.

“Collateral Damage” (2002)
Directed by Andrew Davis

9/11′s impact on popular culture was wide-reaching and long-lasting: entire projects, like “Nosebleed,” a comedy where Jackie Chan was going to play a terrorist-foiling window washer at the World Trade Center, were canceled in pre-production, while images of the Twin Towers were digitally erased from numerous releases in post. The most unfortunately timed film of the period was the Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle “Collateral Damage,” which had the doubly bad fortune of opening with a terrorist attack on American soil and featuring a firefighter (portrayed by Schwarzenegger) who takes the law into his own hands in order to avenge his family’s death. Initially scheduled for release less than a month after the attacks, the film was shelved by its producers for four months. When it finally came to theaters in February 2002, it appeared with a noticeably more subdued marketing campaign and without an originally intended scene involving an airplane hijacking.

“The China Syndrome” (1979)

Directed by James Bridges

Upon its release on March 16th, 1979, the nuclear power plant thriller “The China Syndrome” was already, according to the New York Times‘ Vincent Canby, “smashingly effective” and “as topical as this morning’s weather report.” It became significantly more topical, and as a result, a good deal more effective when, some 12 days later, a nuclear power plant in Central Pennsylvania suffered a partial meltdown of uncanny similarity to the one depicted in the film. As if the film wasn’t ominously prophetic enough already, one character even warned that a serious meltdown could “render an area the size of Pennsylvania uninhabitable.” If “The China Syndrome” had been scheduled for release two weeks later, it could have been delayed for months. Instead, its fortuitous timing helped make it the fourth highest-grossing film of 1979 and ensured that its tagline — “Today, only a handful of people know what it means… Soon you will know” — proved prescient as well.

“SpaceCamp” (1986)

Directed by Harry Winer

It just goes to show that even the most seemingly innocuous film can fall prey to untimely outside sensitivities — “SpaceCamp,” the kiddie NASA adventure movie starring, among others, a young Joaquin Phoenix (back when he was going by Leaf), was reportedly originally scheduled to arrive in theaters in early 1986. On January 28th of that year, the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after its launch, taking with it the seven crewmembers on board and any chance that a lighthearted movie about teenagers who end up in space thanks to a faked shuttle malfunction could easily be passed off as entertainment. The film was eventually released in June to a lukewarm box office, its overwhelming optimism about the space program having taken on an unintended poignancy in the wake of the disaster. Now a cult favorite amongst the ’80s nostalgic, “SpaceCamp” seems to have shed its associations with the Challenger, leaving behind some hefty kitsch appeal.

Honorable Mentions

Neither “V for Vendetta” nor “The Manchurian Candidate” were officially affected by, respectively, the July 2005 London bombing and the death of John F. Kennedy, but there’s been plenty of speculation surrounding both films. James McTeigue’s dark graphic novel adaptation was slated for a fall 2005 release coinciding with the 400th anniversary of the 1605 Gunpowder Plot, in line with a tagline lifted from its source text: “Remember, remember the 5th of November.” When the release was pushed to 2006, studio sources insisted it was because of “the visual effects wouldn’t be completed in time.” “The Manchurian Candidate” debuted in theaters on October 24, 1962, but when Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, star Frank Sinatra, the rumors went, had the film removed from distribution. Of course, by that time the film had been making the rounds for over a year, so claims that it had, even in that more relaxed theatrical era, simply run its course seem at least as plausible.

[Additional photos: "Phone Booth," Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation, 2003; "Alpha Dog," Universal Pictures, 2006; "O," Lionsgate, 2001; "Trespass," Universal Pictures, 1992; "The China Syndrome," Columbia Pictures, 1979; "SpaceCamp," Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation, 1986; "V for Vendetta," Warner Bros. Pictures, 2005]

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