Brad Pitt and George Clooney won’t be teaming up again anytime soon, as Apple TV+ canceled their Wolfs sequel despite being announced months ago.
The news came just months after the original film, which was rumored to have cost more than $200 million, flopped despite reports that it was the most expensive TV movie of all time.
The two A-listers 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 said 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 He also confirmed that plans for the sequel have been scrapped.
Brad Pitt and George Clooney won’t be teaming up again anytime soon as Apple TV+ canceled their Wolfs sequel despite being announced months ago.
Three months ago, the film had been optioned for a sequel weeks before its world premiere at the 81st Venice International Film Festival.
It was revealed by THR In August, Wolf director and writer Watts had landed a new deal with Apple to direct a sequel to the upcoming action comedy.
At the moment, Deadline confirmed that Pitt and Clooney will reprise their roles for the next 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 through Sony.
Wolfs was originally intended for transitioned from a wide theatrical release before debuting on Apple TV+, but those plans had changed.
Pitt and Clooney were reportedly paid $35 million each for starring in the caper film and insisted on releasing it in theaters.
But creators Apple changed their mind and the film, which insiders say cost up to $200 million in total, will now only be released in US theaters for one week.
In all other territories it will go straight to streaming, easily making it the most expensive TV movie ever made.
The two A-listers 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’ll direct next and I don’t think there will be a Wolfs sequel”; Pitt and Clooney are seen at the premiere in Los Angeles in September
Apple’s change of heart follows a series of expensive films made by the streamer, including Napoleon, Killers of the Flower Moon and Argylle, all of which flopped at the cinema.
Clooney denied that his fees were as high as $35 million, saying the actual figure was “many, many millions below” that amount.
But he added that it was a “bummer” the way it had worked out.
He said, “We would have liked that, we wanted that, and Brad and I gave back some of our salary to do it.” We’ve had some bumps in the road and that happens.
“It’s a shame, of course it’s a shame, but a lot of people are going to see the movie and we’re going to release it in a few hundred theaters. It would have been nice to have a wider release.”
He said the economics of streaming are still “figuring out,” but added, “We’re figuring it out.” “We need Apple and Amazon and they need Sony or Warner who have been doing it for 100 years.”
After the release of the original film, the The buddy cop movie had been gutted by critics, who called it a “messy” one-star flop and an “unbearable comedy.”
Wolfs follows the two Ocean’s Eleven co-stars as they are forced to reluctantly work together to “solve” a problem that arises when a tough-on-crime district attorney wakes up to a dead twenty-something man she was spending a night with. stop.
Pitt and Clooney were reportedly paid $35 million each to star in the caper film, and insisted on releasing it in theaters, but it was eventually released on the AppleTV+ streaming service; The two are seen arriving for the Venice Film Festival premiere in September.
But critics say the film, which had a record budget for any streaming movie, flops, with IGN’s Siddhant Adlakha criticizing as a “slick student film about a rich teenager who has subsisted on the media diet of early Guy Ritchie.”
Xan Brooks from The Guardian also wrote that the ‘joke could be from’ director Jon Watts, who made a fortune with the Spider-Man trilogy of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, ‘because what he has made is basically the meme movie in which two Spideys point at each other’ .
And The Telegraph’s Robbie Collin called the film “messy” and wrote: “George Clooney recently complained that Quentin Tarantino doesn’t consider him a movie star.” If he makes more movies like this, Clooney will soon prove Tarantino right.
Adlakha writes that problems with the film, which premiered in Venice on Sunday night, “arise early and often.”
He and other critics say Watts seemed to have relied on Clooney and Pitt’s star status to make it a box office hit, with a lackluster plot and a “half-baked script with little humor or heart.”