A War of the Worlds producer has defended Ice Cube’s critically-panned movie, insisting “I’ll take three weeks at number one at Amazon Prime over a good review any day. Always have”.
A War of the Worlds producer has defended the critically-panned movie.
Ice Cube starred in 2025’s sci-fi remake for Amazon Prime, which follows his alter-ego DHS agent Will Radford trying to protect his family and stop an alien invasion during a pandemic-style lockdown. The movie features aliens consuming digital data, which causes global infrastructure to fail.
And, although the film was a critical flop, producer Timur Bekmambetov insisted he didn’t care.
During a Reddit AMA, he said: “The criticism of War of the Worlds didn’t surprise me. I’ll take three weeks at number one at Amazon Prime over a good review any day. Always have.”
However, he acknowledged how disappointing the movie was, responding to the question: “War of the Worlds – why?” with the quip, “LifeHack [the 2026 movie Bekmambetov produced] is my reparation for The War of the Worlds.”
Ice Cube previously spoke about the production challenges of working on the movie during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
He told streamer Kai Cenat: “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.”
Meanwhile, War of the Worlds was the unwanted big winner at this year’s Razzie Awards in March, taking five of the titles.
The annual Golden Raspberry Awards pay tribute to the year’s worst films, and not only was the sci-fi remake named Worst Picture ahead of The Electric State, Hurry Up Tomorrow, Disney’s Snow White, and Star Trek: Section 31, it also scored Worst Actor for Ice Cube, Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-Off or Sequel, Worst Director for Rich Lee, and Worst Screenplay for Kenny Golde and Marc Hyman.
The Razzies described War of the Worlds as becoming a “cult hate-watch classic almost immediately”.
Razzies bosses added: “War of the Worlds (the 2025 version) has been cemented in Razzie history as a near sweeper of our $4.97 trophy winner.
“Utterly destroying H.G. Wells’ classic novel, director Rich Lee (maybe inspired by Ed Wood) chose a goofy gimmick, hack dialogue and a particularly hilarious performance by its lead, Ice Cube, to seize 2025’s biggest number of statues.”
The only award the film was nominated for but didn’t get was Worst Screen Combo for Ice Cube and his Zoom camera, with the accolade instead going to “all seven artificial dwarfs” in Snow White. The dwarves also took Worst Supporting Actor.
‘I’ll take three weeks at number one over a good review any day’: War of the Worlds producer defends Ice Cube movie
