Brad Pitt and George Clooney won’t be working together again anytime soon, as their Wolfs sequel has been canceled by Apple TV+ despite being announced months ago.
The news came just months after the original film – which reportedly cost more than $200 million – flopped, despite reports that it would be the most expensive TV movie of all time.
The two top stars had worked on the film alongside director Jon Watts in what was touted as AppleTV’s biggest premiere in the streamer’s history.
The 43-year-old filmmaker was promoting the Star Wars series Skeleton Crew when he revealed the news.
He told it Collider on Friday: ‘I don’t know what I’m going to direct next, and I don’t think there will be a sequel to Wolfs.’
Variety also confirmed that plans for the sequel have been scrapped.
Brad Pitt and George Clooney won’t be working together again anytime soon as their sequel to Wolf has been canceled by Apple TV+ despite being announced months ago
The film was optioned for a sequel three months ago, weeks before its world premiere at the 81st Venice International Film Festival.
It was revealed by THR In August, Wolfs director/screenwriter Watts had inked a new deal with Apple for a sequel to the upcoming action comedy.
At that time, Term confirmed that Pitt and Clooney will reprise their roles for the follow-up project.
As part of the big announcement, it was also revealed that Wolfs will premiere on Apple TV+ on September 27, following a limited one-week theatrical release via Sony.
Wolfs was originally intended transitioning from a wide theatrical release before debuting on Apple TV+, but those plans had changed.
Pitt and Clooney were reportedly paid $35 million each to appear in the caper film, and had pushed for a theatrical release.
But makers Apple have changed their minds and the film, which insiders say cost around $200 million in all, is now only a week away from being released in US cinemas.
In all other territories, the film is going straight to streaming, making it easily the most expensive TV movie ever made.
The two top stars had worked on the film alongside director Jon Watts in what was touted as AppleTV’s biggest premiere in the streamer’s history.
The 43-year-old filmmaker was promoting the Star Wars series Skeleton Crew when he revealed the news. He told Collider on Friday: “I don’t know what I’m going to direct next, and I don’t think there will be a sequel to Wolfs”; Pitt and Clooney will be seen at the LA premiere in September
Apple’s change of heart follows a string of expensive films made by the streamer – including Napoleon, Killers of the Flower Moon and Argylle – all of which flopped at the box office.
Clooney denied that their fees were as much as $35 million, saying the actual amount was “many, many millions” below that figure.
But he added that it was “a bummer” the way it had gone.
He said, “We would have liked that, we wanted that, and Brad and I gave back part of our salary for that. We’ve had some bumps along the way, and that happens.
“It sucks, of course it sucks, but a lot of people are going to see the film and we’re going to get a release in a few hundred theaters. It would have been nice to get a wider release.’
He said the economics of streaming are still being “figured out,” but added: “We are figuring it out. We need Apple and Amazon, and they need Sony or Warners, who have been doing this for a hundred years.”
Upon the original film’s release, the The buddy cop feature was eviscerated by critics, who called it a “messy” one-star dud and an “excruciating comedy.”
Wolfs follows the two co-stars of Ocean’s Eleven as they are reluctantly forced to work together to solve a problem that arises when a tough-as-nails prosecutor wakes up to a dead twenty-something woman she had a night with. scaffolding.
Pitt and Clooney were reportedly paid $35 million each to appear in the caper film, and had pushed for a theatrical release, but it was ultimately released on the AppleTV+ streaming service; the two arrive for the Venice Film Festival premiere in September
But critics say the film – which had a record budget for any streaming film – is falling flat IGN’s Siddhant Adlakha slams it’s a ‘slick student film by a rich teenager who lived off the media diet of early Guy Ritchie.’
Xan Brooks from The Guardian also wrote that the “joke might actually be about” director Jon Watts, who made a fortune with the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Spider-Man trilogy, “because what he created is basically the movie of the meme where two Spideys point at each other .’
And The Telegraph’s Robbie Collin called the film ‘messy’, writing: ‘George Clooney recently complained that Quentin Tarantino doesn’t consider him a movie star. If he makes more films like this, Clooney will soon prove Tarantino right.”
Adlakha writes that the problems with the film, which premiered in Venice on Sunday evening, “arise early and often.”
He and the other critics say Watts seemed to have relied on the stardom of Clooney and Pitt to make it a blockbuster, with a lackluster plot and a “half-baked script with little humor or heart.”