Keanu Reeves Movie ’47 Ronin’ Loses Its Director

Keanu Reeves new movie 47 Ronin is in trouble. The samurai epic is vastly over budget, and today Universal fired director Carl Rinsch.

According to The Wrap, 47 Ronin’s budget has skyrocketed past $225 million. The film is currently in the editing process, but Rinsch won’t be overseeing the work. Instead, Universal co-chairwoman Donna Langley will oversea the project.

Universal was apparently upset when Reeves was absent from some of the final climactic battle scenes. The Matrix actor returned to London for some re-shoots, and the film is being re-edited.

Tampabay.com reports that Universal has wanted to fire Rinsch for a while, but the Director’s Guild of America prevented the studio from giving Rinsch the ax until after shooting was finished. Now that the re-shoot is over and the editors are getting to work on putting the film together, Universal has decided to get rid of its director.

The new movie is Keanu Reeves first big budget movie since The Matrix.

Reeves said:

 ”It’s an ambitious film in theme and it’s ambitious in its scale and I think it’s something special. It’s really historical, fantastical. It’s big, you know, it’s like revenge, love, honor, and outsider. So, it’s a kind of eastern-Western, um, yeah, story.”

The ambitious movie will have to be a major success at the box office for Universal to break even. According to the wrap, the $225 budget plus advertising costs will mean that Ronin 47 will have to bring in a half billion dollars to be a success.