(Not, like, Battlefield Earth–level or anything. For a public that perhaps no longer wishes to watch Travolta, perhaps a theatrical run this unceremonious qualifies as giving the people what they want.īut the most self-destructively driven members of the press corps procured screener copies of Gotti all the same, and it is, let’s say, something of a misfire. And all the while, the darkest pallor of all: accusations of sexual battery leveled against Travolta by a 21-year-old masseur. The storm clouds of behind-the-scene dysfunction had this critic eager to see the film at its world premiere out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival imagine my disappointment when the press screenings were quietly canceled, leaving only an exclusive gala screening a scant few members of the press could sneak into. By spring, they would find saviors in Vertical Entertainment (the fine folks who brought us Undercover Grandpa) and the stunningly insolvent, surprisingly still operational MoviePass. The original plan was for Lionsgate to dump the picture straight to on demand for December 15 of last year, until the distributor pulled out ten short days prior to the slated release and sold the rights back to the producers. Today, however? The John Gotti chronicle, matter-of-factly titled Gotti, arrives in a paltry 503 theaters to minimal fanfare and underwhelming box-office grosses, the anticlimactic culmination of a long and calamitous journey through development.

Twenty years ago, news that John Travolta - then resurgent, still riding the second wind that Pulp Fiction had given his career - was starring in a biopic treatment for one of the most infamous men to have ever lived would have heralded a capital-E Event.

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