Ice Cube’s critically panned War of the Worlds was filmed a bit unconventionally.
The rapper and actor stopped by Kai Cenat’s Mafiathon 3, where he revealed how the sci-fi thriller was shot and why its arrival was majorly delayed.
“This is a movie I did in 2020 during the pandemic,” Cube told Cenat as they watched a War of the Worlds clip. “We shot it in 15 days, and it was during the pandemic. So the director wasn’t in there. None of the actors was in there. This was the only way we could really shoot the movie.”
He explained that the film’s release took five years because it was sold to Amazon after Universal shot it. Cube claimed that obtaining the rest of the footage, besides his scenes, took some time.
“All the footage is from real surveillance cameras all around the world,” he added, per HotNewHipHop. “So they had to build all that and then collect and edit the footage.”
The 2025 offering is a take on H.G. Wells’ alien invasion classic The War of the Worlds. Cube stars as computer security analyst William Radford, who finds himself at the center of an alien invasion of Earth. In addition to Cube, the Rich Lee-directed film features Eva Longoria, Iman Benson, Henry Hunter Hall, Clark Gregg, and Devon Bostick.
According to the outlet, the film has been a surprising hit on streaming, though it appears it was more of a hate-watch than anything else. In the first week of its release, War of the Worlds topped Amazon’s most-watched list in 30 countries, including the US.
Unfortunately, the movie was widely panned on Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic alike. Days after its July 30 arrival, the pic landed a very rare zero percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. As of this writing, War of the Worlds has inched up to four percent on the Tomatometer and sits at 2.0 on Metacritics’ Overwhelming Dislike category.
