Some movies flop. Some never get made. Then there’s Gore, a finished $40 million Netflix film that’s spent nearly a decade collecting dust instead of finding an audience. Kevin Spacey is asking for one thing. Release it. Or let someone else.
Speaking on Bill Maher’s Club Random podcast, the actor made an emotional case for Gore, the biopic about American writer Gore Vidal that Netflix shelved after sexual misconduct allegations against him surfaced in 2017. By then, the movie was done. Netflix had planned a theatrical release, commissioned a trailer and was preparing an awards campaign. Then everything stopped.
“It’s one of the best films I’ve ever done,” Spacey said.
That’s a bold statement from someone whose résumé includes The Usual Suspects, L.A. Confidential, American Beauty and House of Cards. Whether you agree with him or not, it does make you wonder what exactly is sitting in Netflix’s vault.
Directed by Michael Hoffman, the filmmaker behind The Last Station, Gore stars Spacey as Vidal, one of America’s best-known writers and cultural critics. Spacey didn’t just show up, say his lines and head home either. He lived in Vidal’s house in Ravello, Italy, while preparing for the role. That’s a level of commitment actors love talking about during awards season. In this case, nobody even got the chance.
The bigger frustration, according to Spacey, isn’t his own career. It’s everyone else’s. He called the situation “a bitter pill to swallow,” pointing to the cast and crew whose work disappeared alongside the controversy. Michael Stuhlbarg, who plays Vidal’s partner of more than 40 years, receives special praise from Spacey. “The director, the screenwriter, Michael Stuhlbarg, who plays the Gore lover of 40-some years, I think would win an Academy Award for his performance. The other actors, the crew, they’re also being punished and they shouldn’t be.”
That argument has followed the film for years. Producer Andy Paterson has repeatedly asked Netflix either to release Gore or sell it to another distributor. According to Paterson, the answer hasn’t changed. Netflix “do not intend to ever release the picture or sell it to a third party.”
That’s a strange fate for a completed feature that reportedly cost $40 million to produce. Most studios eventually try to recover something from projects they abandon. Gore remains locked away with no public release plan and no opportunity for audiences to decide whether it’s worth watching.
Spacey isn’t demanding a comeback. He isn’t asking Netflix to rewrite history either. His request is much smaller. “I hope Netflix grows up about it because it’s an incredible movie.”
Whether Gore lives up to that claim is almost beside the point now. The film exists. The people who made it finished the job. Michael Hoffman has directed very little since Gore disappeared, and years later the movie still sits on a shelf where nobody can judge it on its own terms.
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