TORONTO — In the latest of his string of film deletions, David Zaslav has deleted a film for tax write-offs in the middle of its TIFF screening.
“As I was in the theater watching it, I was gauging the interest of the crowd and using my acute film executive acumen to predict how it would be received,” said Zaslav in a post screening interview. “By about the 15 minute mark of the film I figured this would get an 8, maybe 9 minute standing ovation and that’s just not good enough for the profit margins we’re looking for. Anything less than an 11 minute ovation is a disaster so this film is basically unreleasable. That’s when I stepped out, went to the projectionsist and held a gun to the kid’s head until he stopped the movie, and I proceeded to destroy the only copy.”
Brian Mallory, who was making his directorial debut with the film, says he and Zaslav spoke after the screening about the film’s deletion.
“I was really excited for this obviously. It’s every young filmmaker’s dream to make a film and debut it here at TIFF and I was looking forward to getting my artistic vision out into the world. David took me aside and told me that if I just go along with it and make the shareholders happy he’ll give me an unlimited budget to make The Flash 2 so he’s the boss and I guess the film just wasn’t working. I’m proud of the cast and crew for all the hard work they did but I guess it just wasn’t good enough. Zaslav knows best.”
Martin Scorsese was in the audience for the screening and was asked afterwards about his thoughts on the matter.
“Look, all I’m going to say is that I know some people, they paint houses and it’s my understanding David Zaslav needs his house painted. It’s what it is.”
At press time, David Zaslav has reportedly allocated the write-off money to greenlight Joker 3.
