Bruce Willis leaves Wake, will no longer defend family from terrorists or whatever
Bruce Willis has officially dropped out of the indie thriller Wake, which shut down production this past February after losing its financing. A couple of weeks after the shutdown, the Greater Cleveland Film Commission announced that filming would resume on March 23, but it never happened. Director John Pogue (The Quiet Ones) has exited along with Willis.
Willis’ departure leaves the film’s future in question, but had he stayed, he would have played a sociopath who returned to his family’s ancestral home on a remote island to attend his brother’s wake. While there, the island would have come under siege, and Willis would have had to protect the family that once banished him over his violent tendencies.
Wake would have also starred Ben Kingsley and Ellen Burstyn in unknown roles, possibly as Willis’ parents who always preferred their non-sociopathic son. It’s also unknown just what Willis would have been protecting his family from, although we’re betting it was either gangsters, militiamen, or wolves. Unless producers can quickly snap up an adequate Bruce Willis substitute willing to spend a few months in Cleveland, the world may never know.