How Whoopi Goldberg Was Forced to Make This Disastrous Dino Detective Film
Dinosaur movies are usually an easy cinematic hit, but I bet Whoopi Goldberg was hoping a meteor would come down as she reluctantly filmed dino detective flick Theodore Rex.
Back in the ‘90s, Goldberg was on top of the world. She had won an Oscar in 1991 for her role in Ghost, and was still riding off that high when she presented the Academy Awards herself in both 1994 and 1996. There was just one T-Rex-shaped problem.
Theodore Rex, the first direct-to-video movie to achieve recognition at the Razzies, is a pretty novel concept. It takes place in an alternate future society where humans and dinosaurs end up peacefully coexisting instead of, you know, the dinosaurs eating us for lunch.
Goldberg plays tough, straight-talking police detective Katie Coltrane, while the titular Theodore Rex, voiced by George Newbern, is her bumbling sidekick. Together, they're tasked with finding the one responsible for murdering dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures, which turns out to be related to a wild scheme to bring about a second Ice Age.
There was just one problem — Whoopi didn’t want to be in it.
The Rocky Road To Theodore Rex
In October 1992, for reasons unknown, Whoopi verbally agreed to star in Theodore Rex. Bear in mind at that point she was at the height of her fame, with Sister Act being released that summer.
However, as production for the movie drew nearer, she started getting cold feet — and this time around, there was no convent to escape to. “It got to the point where Stefano [Ferrari, financier and producer] was still paying holding money on the vast amount of money that was set aside,” director Jonathan Betuel told SlashFilm.
“And Whoopi’s people, they basically said: We know you paid this, Stefano, and we’ll give you your money back. But if you’re looking for anything more than that, then sue us.’ Not in so many words, but that was the crux of it.”
In the end, Team Rex decided to call that bluff, and filed a $20 million lawsuit against the star. After producer Richard Abramson discovered an answering machine message on which Goldberg said she was “100% committed” to the project, it became clear that she and her team didn’t really have a leg to stand on. So, in the end, the suit was settled, and Goldberg agreed to be in the film for $7 million — which, it should be noted, was $2 million more than the initial salary.
However, she wasn’t happy about it, and it looks like Ferrari got the brunt of her displeasure. “I ran into Whoopi twice during pre-production,” he recalled. “One of those times, I was walking out of an office and she was walking in. I said hello, but she did not. Instead, she muttered under her breath: ‘motherf***er.’ And from then on, she referred to me as ‘motherf***er.’”
It should be noted that Ferrari invested $14 million in this film, with the money coming from his family’s pharmaceutical business.
Somehow, Things Got Worse For Whoopi
Things got so unpleasant that, according to the LA Times, Ferrari was banned from set when Goldberg was about. Her former business partner, Larry Finch, received the same ban while Abramson reportedly “relinquished his day-to-day duties before pre-production.”
“Life is too short,” Abramson is quoted as saying. “The budget was tight, relationships were strained, and I had second thoughts about going into a situation with an unhappy star.”
The film was originally angling for a Christmas 1995 theatrical release, but was later delayed to early 1996. The idea was for it to piggyback off of Whoopi’s 1996 Oscar’s gig, but after a string of unsuccessful test screenings, it was decided that the film would be released direct-to-video. This led to it breaking an unwelcome record at the time: with a $33.5 million budget, it was the most expensive direct-to-video release ever.
Ultimately, for everyone involved, Theodore Rex was a learning curve. As Betuel put it to SlashFilm: “You learn a lot of things when you make a movie. Any movie. And the number one thing I learned on this one was: you can't sue your star.”
