An upcoming Keanu Reeves film is apparently so bad that the director himself doesn't want to be associated with it.
The new cop thriller 'Exposed' is listed as being directed by Declan Dale, but according to Page Six, this is actually a pseudonym for first time director Gee Malik Linton. He fought a legal battle with Lionsgate Premiere in order to get his name taken off the project.
Evidently, the film was initially focused on a young Latina and Dominican family with a small white male role. Linton intended it to be a serious drama focusing on women's issues, but Lionsgate wanted to turn it into a thriller with Keanu Reeves as the main star. Linton turned in his cut of the movie, but Lionsgate's response was that they bought an action movie and they couldn't do anything with his version.
The film was allegedly re-edited to completely take out the Dominican family and to become a boilerplate action film. Linton tried to buy the film back but was not successful. One source said that Reeves himself supervised the editing, but a representative for the actor said Reeves was never in the editing room at all.
This practice of a director using a fake name for a movie he feels is no longer his has occurred many times before, most recently with the David O. Russell movie 'Accidental Love.' The director abandoned the project, and when it was completed without his involvement, he opted to use the pseudonym Stephen Greene rather than be associated with it.