ROB ZOMBIE: MGM Pulled Plug On Movie Over A Joke

As first reported here yesterday, ROB ZOMBIE has now officially confirmed that MGM has dropped his much-talked-about movie, House Of 1000 Corpses, several months ahead of its previously-announced Halloween release.

Speaking to MTV.com, ZOMBIE blamed the decision by MGM to distance themselves from the film on an offhand joke made by the singer during a previous MTV interview.

While speaking to Ben Affleck for an MTV "Movie House" segment early last month, ZOMBIE had explained how Universal dropped the picture because they found the content to be morally objectionable. When the actor asked about MGM, ZOMBIE joked, "Apparently they have no morals over there. They're happy for some blood."

"MGM got wind of it and got so pissed off they shut us down the next day," ZOMBIE told MTV. "We went into editing, and they were like, 'Get out.' ... They went berserk. And literally, they never called me or any of the producers. They had assistants call the editing room and they were like, 'Get out.' It was over in a second, we couldn't get any resolve on it. It was very strange."

Meanwhile, it appears that MGM is denying that they ever planned to distribute the picture in the first place.

"It was falsely announced in [Hollywood trade paper] Variety that we had the project," said an MGM spokesperson who asked not to be named. "We never had a deal with ROB ZOMBIE. We were in negotiations, let's put it that way, or we were thinking about it."

ZOMBIE, however, views the situation differently. "MGM came on board. It kind of never really got out, but they were paying all of the bills, they were editing, it was all on their dime, they were investing. So once the studio's paying their money, you know they're into it."

As a result of this most recent setback, ZOMBIE appears to have finally given up on trying to find a major studio to distribute his film and is planning on releasing the picture independently.

"What I think the reality of the situation is, whether it's MGM or Universal, or whatever, the movie's not anything that a major studio wants to touch," he said. "They don't want to deal with it. Everyone will go, 'What about Hannibal?' but Hannibal's gonna make $300 million, so they're fine. What we've done now is I own the film, and I just hired a company that will do the prints and the advertising. And I'm just gonna release it myself so it cuts out the middle man."

"Looking back, it was completely unrealistic [to think a studio would release the film]. ... These studios are just such big corporate entities, owned by these other companies, and so many investors and stockholders. It's just [that] they don't want controversy.

"It's just a different time for movies," he added. "I've been talking to a lot of people in the business, and it's just like, there's a lot of movies that you love [that could not be made today]. They'd be hard pressed to get Taxi Driver made now."