Jim Sheridan wants his name removed from ‘Dream House’

Director Jim Sheridan is fighting to have his name removed from his latest film ‘Dream House’, saying it wasn’t the film he set out to make, after it got a critical panning and became a box office failure in the US.

With a cast including Rachel Weisz, Daniel Craig and Naomi Watts, and a six-time Oscar nominee behind the camera, by rights the film should have turned out great. But this is the second time he’s asked to have his name removed - the LA Times reports that over the summer he asked the Directors Guild of America with the hope of getting his name removed from the credits.

The name Alan Smithee would have been put on the finished film instead, which is the name always used in these situations.

Sheridan’s 1989 debut ‘My Left Foot’ won him multiple Oscar nominations, but after the relative disappointments of his last two movies, ‘Get Rich Or Die Tryin’ and ‘Brothers’, Sheridan’s work on ‘Dream House’ reportedly caused concern from an insider working on the set from the start.

They told the paper that the director deviated from the original script by David Loucka at the start of production, favouring a more improvisational style of working. The first test screen was apparently “disastrous”, leading to “rampant anxiety” at Morgan Creek Productions - who financed the film - and the first round of reshoots. In the end, the production company ended up taking control of what went on in the edit room, instead of Sheridan.

His first bid to take his name off the film was dropped after Morgan Creek agreed to let him do a new second set of reshoots. But, subsequently, tension grew and he refused to do any publicity for the movie’s release.

Total Film reports that Sheridan has now reinstated his request to have his name removed from the film, since the finished product that Morgan Creek released is not what he set out to make.