Geostorm not on the radar

It’s rare for a giant blow-’em-up blockbuster to slink into cinemas without a media screening. The last time it happened was with Independence Day: Resurgence in the summer of 2016. And by coincidence (or is it?) one of that movie’s half-dozen writers was Dean Devlin, whose directing debut, Geostorm (not to be confused with Geo Storm, a ’90s compact car) opens on Friday without a peek for the critics.

Geostorm has been a long time brewing. The Hollywood Reporter was calling this a “troubled” film 10 months ago, when director Danny Cannon was called in to oversee extensive reshoots after poor test screenings. Geostorm was originally set to open in March 2016, but the date kept getting pushed until the future in which it is set threatened to turn into the present.

The film stars Gerard Butler as Jake Lawson, chief co-ordinator of the “Climate ISS,” which seems to be the International Space Station, repurposed to control Earth’s weather and stop natural disasters.

Of course something goes wrong with the technology, and the trailer features scenes of bus-sized hail, flocks of tornadoes and city-engulfing tsunamis.

Scuttlebutt has it that Toronto actress Katheryn Winnick was cut from the film and replaced with another actress during reshoots. If so, Winnick may have dodged a bullet — and perhaps a lightning storm and several tornadoes.