Every year, I check back to see if there’s any movement on Timur Bekmambetov’s “War of the Worlds” — a film that wrapped production five years ago. Not because I’ve been dying to see it, but more out of sheer curiosity: how bad could this thing actually be?
We finally have an update.
Turns out, it won’t be getting the ol’ Zaslavian tax write-off. Instead, it’s being dumped on Prime Video, landing July 30. No production budget has been disclosed, but it probably wasn’t that cheap.
To mark the “occasion,” Prime has released a trailer, accompanied by a short description that reads: “Ice Cube fights aliens to save his family and the world.”
Shot in 2020, the film was clearly a problem for Universal, who seemingly had no idea what to do with the finished product. So they waited it out, until ultimately deciding it was fit for a disposable streaming release.
The new film, a modern-day reimagining of H.G. Wells’ classic alien invasion tale, stars Ice Cube as a top cyber-security analyst who begins to suspect that the real threat might not be coming from the sky, but from within the very institution he serves—after an unprecedented attack shakes the system.
Cube is joined by Eva Longoria, in a cast that also includes Clark Gregg, Andrea Savage, Henry Hunter Hall, Iman Benson, Devon Bostick, and Michael O’Neill. The screenplay was written by Kenneth Golde and Marc Hyman.