Director Mathieu Kassovitz Rips Into Fox About ‘Babylon A.D.’ Experience

Director Mathieu Kassovitz spoke with AMCTV just five days before his newest film, ‘Babylon A.D’, is released into theaters.   His reaction to the film and to working with 20th Century Fox on the project?

“I’m very unhappy with the film,” Kassovitz says. “I never had a chance to do one scene the way it was written or the way I wanted it to be.   The script wasn’t respected.   Bad producers, bad partners, it was a terrible experience.”

The film is based on a novel, Babylon Babies, by Maurice Georges Dantec.   Kassovitz viewed turning the novel into a feature film a dream project.

“The scope of the original book was quite amazing,” Kassovitz says. “The author was very much into geopolitics and how the world is going to evolve. He saw that as wars evolve, it won’t be just about territories any more, but money-driven politics. As a director it’s something that’s very attractive to do.”

But Kassovitz’s original intentions were not to see the light of day.

“It’s pure violence and stupidity,” he admits. “The movie is supposed to teach us that the education of our children will mean the future of our planet. All the action scenes had a goal: They were supposed to be driven by either a metaphysical point of view or experience for the characters… instead parts of the movie are like a bad episode of 24.”

“Fox was sending lawyers who were only looking at all the commas and the dots,” he says. “They made everything difficult from A to Z.” The last stroke, Kassovitz says, was when Fox interfered with the editing of the film, paring it down to a confusing 93 minutes.

“I should have chosen a studio that has guts,” he says. “Fox was just trying to get a PG-13 movie. I’m ready to go to war against them, but I can’t because they don’t give a s–t.”

Kassovitz is not the first director in recent memory to have open issues with Fox.   Xavier Gens was originally asked by the studio to make his film, ‘Hitman’, PG-13.   He refused to do so, and was allowed to shoot the movie aiming for an R.   However, in the final stages, he was removed and replaced in the editing room by Nicolas De Toth.   De Toth did the same with last year’s, ‘Live Free or Die Hard’, another PG-13 actioner from Fox.