Remember “Aeon Flux“? No? Don’t worry, nobody does, and star Charlize Theron and director Karyn Kusama still try to forget it. Critics hated the action flick on its release in 2005, with it currently holding a 9% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It didn’t make back its budget at the box office either, taking in only $52 million on a $62 million budget. In a word, yikes.
And according to Theron, she knew she and Kusama had a bomb on their hands from the start, and that’s why she quickly joined the cast of “Arrested Development” soon afterward. EW reports (via The Hollywood Reporter) that Theron joined the TV show because if she didn’t, “Aeon Flux” probably would have ended her Hollywood career. “It was one of the scariest things, to walk onto a set of a show that’s so developed and so brilliant,” the actress told THR. “But I think I needed that, to put myself out there in a different way, because people thought of me as someone who was f—ing depressing.”
Before “Aeon Flux,” audiences knew Theron best for her role as serial killer Aileen Wuournos in 2003’s “Monster.” That role won her Best Actress at the Oscars that year, but it typecast her as a heavy onscreen presence. After “Aeon Flux” flopped hard, Theron knew she had to take a different tack to save her acting career. “I just f—ing loved that show,” Theron continued, “and this is going to sound so ‘poor me,’ but I do feel like sometimes, as women, we get one shot, and I knew that “Aeon Flux” was going to be a f—ing flop. I knew it from the beginning. That’s why I did “Arrested Development.”” On the show, Theron played Rita Leeds, the British love interest of Jason Bateman‘s Michael Bluth. The show’s third season on Fox coincided with the theatrical run of “Aeon Flux.”
But was “Aeon Flux” that bad? Oh yeah, Theron knew from the start of production nether she nor Kusama had “the answers for how” to fix it. “I definitely knew we were in trouble,” Theron said about the film. “I wasn’t a producer on it, and I didn’t really have the experience to say what I believe Tom Cruise has maybe said for the past 20 years, which is, ‘Shut this s–t down, get four more writers on it, and let’s figure this out.’ Instead, I’m going, ‘Oh God, I’ve just got to get through this day. I have bronchitis, but let’s keep shooting.’ Now I imagine all these male actors going, ‘Shut it down for six months!’ And it’s like, f—, no one told me that was an option.”
Kusama shared similar feelings about “Aeon Flux” to the film’s star. The film was the director’s first big-budget film after the breakout success of her 2000 film “Girlfight.” Instead of mainstream success, Kusama told Buzzfeed in 2016 that making the movie was an “eviscerating” experience. “There was a sense everyone was in the dark about what does it mean to be a woman behind, at the time, what was a very high-profile assignment,” Kusama said. “It had been budgeted at something insane that the studio didn’t want to make it for, like, $110 million. And so they said, ‘Can you basically make it for half that?’ But that was still a really big movie to be my second movie, and a really big movie to be any woman’s movie.”
Paramount later booted Kusama from the film’s post-production, bringing in new editors to re-cut the film. At the time, Kusama didn’t know how to navigate that conflict. “I felt like I was having, like, open-heart surgery without the painkillers,” the director continued. “This is where gender plays a part. This is where big personalities and power and influence really make a difference. Because I just didn’t have anyone who could advocate for why it was important that they treat me better. There are so few playbooks to go by in my situation. It was kind of like I was in this primeval forest.”
Despite the disastrious reception to “Aeon Flux,” Theron and Kusama still had career success afterward. Kusama has one of the biggest shows on TV right now in Showtime‘s “Yellowjacket,” but she’s also helmed three consecutive critical hits since the 2005 flop. “Jennifer’s Body,” “The Invitation,” and “Destroyer” all fare well both with critics and audiences. As for Theron, she had two more Oscar nominations after “Monster” with “North Country” and “Bombshell.” And the actress found the blockbuster success “Aeon Flux” didn’t supply in George Miller‘s modern classic from 2015 “Mad Max: Fury Road,” as well as some later entries in the “Fast And Furious” franchise.
So, yes, there’s life after flops like “Aeon Flux,” but in Theron’s case, it took plunging into TV comedy to wash its stink off. She stars next in “Fast X,” in theaters next year.
