A poster released this week for the new Nicolas Cage thriller Dying of the Light identifies it as “A Paul Schrader Film” and further proclaims that it’s “from the writer of Taxi Driver and co-writer of Raging Bull,” but the writer-director took to Facebook on Thursday to warn his followers that the film “was taken away from me.”
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“We lost the battle,” his post begins before alleging that the film was re-edited, scored and mixed without his input. Suggesting that he has the support of Cage, co-star Anton Yelchin and fellow director Nicolas Winding Refn, who executive produced Light, Schrader and the three other men are pictured wearing T-shirts bearing what’s known as the non-disparagement clause, which give the owner of a film the right to sue an artist who says anything derogatory about the film in which he worked, implying that they are not free to voice their objections to how the movie has been handled.
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Light, which Schrader wrote and directed, stars Cage as a CIA operative, battling a deteriorating mental condition, as he pursues an old nemesis. Yelchin plays his CIA protege. The low-budget thriller, which was filmed in Romania and Australia, was produced by Over Under Media and financed by the Bahamas-based TinRes Entertainment. In August, it was announced that Grindstone Entertainment, a subsidiary of Lionsgate, had acquired the film for release through Lionsgate Home Entertainment. The movie opens day-and-date in limited release — the number of theaters was not immediately available — and on VOD on Dec. 5.
Asked to respond to Schrader’s charges, a Lionsgate spokesman declined comment. Schrader’s own post concluded, “I have no comment on the film or others connected with the picture.”
