Distributor: Summit Entertainment
Production: Thunder Road Pictures, Mystery Clock
Cinema Cast: Gerard Butler, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Brenton Thwaites, Geoffrey Rush, Chadwick Boseman, Elodie Yung, Courtney Eaton
Director: Alex Proyas Screenwriters: Matt Sazama, Burk Sharpless
Producers: Basil Iwanyk, Alex Proyas
Executive producers: Topher Dow, Stephen Jones, Kent Kubena
Director of photography: Peter Menzies Jr.
Production designer: Owen Paterson
Editor: Richard Learoyd
Costume designer: Liz Keogh
Composer: Marco Meltrami
Casting: Nikki Barrett, John Papsidera
Rated PG-13, 127 minutes
An Egyptian god battles his vengeful uncle with the aid of a mortal in Alex Proyas' fantasy-adventure film. Oh, dear. Arriving just days before the all-white Oscars is a fantasy-adventure film set in an ancient Egypt almost entirely populated, mortals and gods alike, by Caucasians, including Gerard Butler. After all, when you imagine an Egyptian god, the first thing you think of is a burly Scotsman. But that's only one of the many problems of Summit's Gods of Egypt, a movie which seems inspired by a video game even though it wasn't. This overstuffed, witless and bloated stillborn $140 million epic is unlikely to spawn the studio's intended franchise — unless, as is so often the case, international audiences come to the box-office rescue. Directed by Alex Proyas (coming a long way down from the likes of The Crow and Dark City), the film begins with a voiceover narrator attempting to explain what's going on. He needn't have bothered. It seems that the god Osiris (Bryan Brown, one of many Aussie thespians in the largely Sydney-shot film) is about to coronate his son Horus (Nikoaj Coster-Waldau) as the new king. The ceremony is interrupted by the arrival of Horus' uncle, Set (Butler), who comments, "It's a big day for the family," as if it was a bar mitzvah.
