A new reimagining of the classic H. G. Wells science fiction novel War of the Worlds is streaming on Prime Video, and it was a long road to get here.
The story has been adapted several times, first for radio in 1938, when it created mass panic, then as a film in 1953, and again in 2005. Actor Ice Cube stars in the new version, which was filmed amid the pandemic, and he has described how tricky that was to pull off.
During a recent interview with Kai Cenat, the Friday star said that the viral War of the Worlds remake was produced in 2020 during the COVID pandemic. Because of health protocols, his scenes were completed in 15 days and had to be shot isolated from the director and his co-stars.
“[‘War of the Worlds’] was a movie I did in 2020 during the pandemic. We shot it in 15 days, and it was during the pandemic. So the director wasn’t in there. None of the actors was in there. This was the only way we could really shoot the movie.”
Ice Cube explained that the movie took five years to release because it was originally shot by Universal, which then sold it to Amazon. He claimed that acquiring the rest of the footage outside of his scenes also contributed to the delay.
“All the footage is from real surveillance cameras all around the world. So they had to build all that shit [and then collect and edit the footage].”
This new War of the Worlds quickly became a viral sensation after its trailer debuted on July 30, and during its first week on the streamer, it held the number one slot on Amazon’s most-watched list in 30 markets, including the U.S..
Ice Cube stars in War of the Worlds as computer security analyst William Radford, who is thrown into the center of a global catastrophe when aliens invade Earth. Other cast members include Eva Longoria, Iman Benson, Henry Hunter Hall, Clark Gregg and Devon Bostick.
via: Variety