Page Six has posted a piece, “Director wants nothing to do with Keanu Reeves’ film”. The story appears to be based on “exclusive” information from sources not named and one of Linton’s friends, also not named.
The following points are made in the story and you can read the article for the details (bolding mine):
- Gee Malik Linton removed his name from the film due to friction with Keanu Reeves.
- Linton waged a legal battle to have his name removed and he also chose the pseudonym “Declan Dale” that is currently being listed as the director of Expose.
- The source said that the film focused on a young Latina and Dominican family and there was a small white male role.
- The source claims that when Lionsgate signed on to distribute, the film was sold as a thriller.
- Linton’s friend says “they” wanted to turn the film into a Reeves cop thriller but it is not clear who “they” is referring to.
- Linton turned in his version of the edited film and Lionsgate said “no thanks”. Apparently Linton was given the option to buy the film back but that deal fell through.
- Sources said the film was re-edited with Reeves acting as the supervisor and made the film all about himself.
- Reeves rep has chimed in and is on record as saying Keanu Reeves did NOT supervise any of the editing.
- Another source close to the film said Keanu was never in the editing room and the film is the same film it always was.
Note: Variety posted on September 6, 2014 that Keanu Reeves and Ana de Armas signed on to star in Daughter of God, a mystery-thriller. The press release at the time said that CAA and Cassian Elwes were co-repping domestic rights. So when Variety posted this release, Lionsgate had NOT signed on to the film as a distributor but yet it was still referred to as a ‘thriller’. So claiming that the film suddenly turned into a thriller when Lionsgate signed on to distribute doesn’t hold water.
So lets take a look at the notion that the Latina was supposed to be the focus of the film and the white male cop just a small role. First of all, Keanu has signed on to supporting roles in films before. In this case, the press release in September of 2014 said he was starring along with de Armas. First, I find it hard to believe that Keanu would have signed on for a small part and had it misrepresented as a starring role. Second, de Armas has credits to her name and she may be a good actress but when this film was made, Knock Knock hadn’t been released yet and she was virtually unknown to domestic (US) audiences. Usually directors have a say in who appears in their films so if Linton’s intention was to have a Latina front and center in his film, then maybe he should have held out for a Latina actress that was known to domestic audiences and had the chops to carry the film. Regardless, from reading that press release in Variety, I and probably others were of the opinion that Reeves was the name that would carry Daughter of God and to think otherwise is naive.
The film was listed as completed on IMDbPro as of August 25, 2015 and there was a photo and info that indicated it was screened in Paris in mid August (links here). Since Hervé de Luze is a French editor I’m assuming this screening was of Linton’s version that Lionsgate rejected. If this assumption is correct, that means the film was re-edited sometime between the end of August until recently. With respect to these claims that Reeves supervised the re-editing, first of all we have one of his reps and another source who say no, he did not and was not even present. Frankly, I’m not sure when he would have had time to do it. He was involved in The Bad Batch and Neon Demon shoots, up to his eyeballs in Arch Motorcycle business including editing his promo clip for the Neiman Marcus catalog and taking various trips associated with Arch business, weapons training for JW2, trips abroad to promote Knock Knock and John Wick, anyone who takes the time to check the photo data bases or the various fan sites can see he has been going pretty much non-stop since January of 2015.
I think it fair to also point out that Lionsgate distributes movies to make money. If they though Linton’s version of the film was superior to the ‘thriller’ they were expecting and they thought they could sell it to domestic audiences, then I have trouble believing they would have rejected it. Considering how this mess is evolving and the fact that Linton disassociated himself from the film, I wouldn’t count on the distributor including his version on the Blu-ray when it’s released. Maybe Linton will post it on youtube so people can judge for themselves which version is better.
No doubt, Mr. Reeves will land on his feet – he’s actively working on JW2 and has other projects lined up. Mr. Linton, well that remains to be seen. The Page Six piece claims he’s working on The Seventh Swords.
Additional note with respect to the small part of a white cop claim. The vast number of papazzi photos of Reeves on the set on multiple days during the shoot coupled with the interior shots we never saw but we know exist from the trailer, suggests that these scenes were always part of the original script. From my point of view, this didn’t look like a small inconsequential role.
