While the “passion project” film can sometimes result in something special, it can most often be the root cause of a box office disaster. A creative person blinded by the desire to see a pet project come to fruition will overlook its weaknesses no matter how big they are. One of the biggest examples of this was 2000’s Battlefield Earth.
Battlefield Earth- A Saga of the Year 3000 and a perfect doorstop.
Battlefield Earth, the book, was written by the infamous L. Ron Hubbard. Hubbard was a Sci-Fi pulp author and noted fabulist who turned his pulpy novels into an atomic age self-help system known as Dianetics which then evolved in a tax evading full fledged religion known as Scientology. In the early 1980’s Hubbard had become a hermit, hiding out from process servers seeking to serve court documents related to his controversial religion. It was during this time that Mr. Hubbard decided that the key to overcoming the bad publicity surrounding his religion was to return to his Sci-Fi roots and write a massive book that would show the world what would happen if it didn’t embrace Scientology. The dystopian novel could then become a major motion picture that would spread the word of his space age belief system.
Wait, people really thought my crazy Sci-Fi novel Dianetics was a self-help book?
Hubbard, however, hadn’t written a non-Scientology book in decades and had become increasingly paranoid. Additionally, his previous Sci-Fi books had been written back when his pay was determined by the word. As a result, Battlefield Earth was ridiculously long and filled with blatantly obvious symbolism. The book landed with a thud, propped up by Scientology, who purchased most of the copies at bookstores to inflate its sales. Nobody in Hollywood was interested in the book. Nobody in Hollywood except for John Travolta.
Wait, this *isn’t* a crazy scene from my next picture?
L. Ron Hubbard had sent a copy of the book to Travolta, who had become a Scientologist in the 1970’s. Travolta originally saw himself as playing the subtly named lead protagonist Jonnie “Goodboy” Tyler. In interviews, Hubbard wrongly suggested that there was much interest in the film coming from Hollywood and that he might direct or produce the film. Hollywood, however, had been reluctant to even consider a film based on a book written by Hubbard and tied to Scientology. Travolta’s star power was seen as being more powerful than Hollywood’s skepticism about the commercial prospects of an overly long film tied to Scientology. At the end of 1983, however, the film’s prospects seemed to improbably improve.
