Atuk: the cursed comedy movie that will never be made
Hollywood is filled to the brim with creatives, artists and superstitious people. Your favourite movie was probably made by folks who know their horoscopes back to front, what days of the week their lucky socks stop working and which side of the mug to drink out of if they want the traffic to be good that day.
There’s a deeper reason for all this. Fundamentally, any creative industry is based around nothing more than luck. Hone your craft as much as you want, whether that craft resonates with people, whether it’s writing, acting, music or anything else, is up to the whims of fate. Even if you put 10,000 hours in, that doesn’t mean you can avoid working at Panera Bread when retirement comes a’knocking. Then you’ll open the trades and find some 17-year-old sold the script they farted out as a lark for more money than you’ve ever made in your life and decide, “No, this is the day I chase my afternoon coffee with bleach.”
People need to feel a degree of control over the uncontrollable, which births the bizarre world of Hollywood superstitions. Or at least, most of the time they sound bizarre. Other times, you get stories like that of The Exorcist or Poltergeist. Movies whose productions were so catastrophic, and the fates of those who worked on them so grim, that you can’t help but think that these productions were actually cursed.
Then you get comedy movies like Atuk. A movie that you won’t have heard of since it was never made, let alone released. Based on a novel released in 1963 called The Incomparable Atuk, the story is of a Canadian Inuk who is transplanted to Toronto and finds himself corrupted by the temptations of modern life and modern culture. All pretty standard noble savage dogrel with a neat line in Canadian nationalism and anti-American sentiment, so it’s not all bad at least.
Then it got optioned in the 1980s, which is when things started to get really weird.
How was this movie cursed?
As you can imagine, an Atuk movie lives and dies based on the casting of its title character. You’ve got to find someone funny, but also a talented enough actor who can embody the character’s descent without alienating the audience. Fortunately, this was a movie entering production in the 1980s, where comedy stars like that were a dime a dozen. In fact, they found the right guy to play Atuk as early as 1982, and what’s more, he was down to play the role as well.
The only issue was that they identified John Belushi. Months after he read the script, he was found dead in his apartment in Hollywood. This, fittingly enough, put the movie on ice for years, until the idea was resurrected in 1988, this time with Sam Kinison eyed for the lead. Kinison exited the project when he realised he wasn’t going to get the creative control he wanted, then died in 1992. The two leads then targeted for the picture were John Candy and Chris Farley. No prizes for guessing what ended their involvement in the picture.
Now, obviously, the curse is bollocks. There isn’t one; curses don’t exist. There were many people who were sought out for the role who didn’t die. Will Ferrell, Jack Black, John Goodman and Josh Mostel, to name a few. However, people would much rather fear a curse than fear what exists in Hollywood. Drug addiction and a lax duty of care for those who work in the industry. They’d rather fear a curse they can’t change than the much scarier option.
The fact that loads of people could change the culture and make it safer for people. They just won’t.