Why A Gene Hackman Movie Was Banned In America

Gene Hackman, who died at 95 on February 26, 2025, was nothing short of a marvelous actor. Apart from his two Academy Awards — for Best Actor in a Leading Role for his work as Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle in William Friedkin's "The French Connection" (1971) and Best Actor in a Supporting Role for playing Little Bill Daggett in Clint Eastwood's "Unforgiven" (1992) — his proverbial mantelpiece accumulated over 30 different acting awards over his decades-long career. Knowing the kind of spotlight such success places on a performer, you'd expect that any studio that could score Hackman's services would have rushed to release his movies the second they were done ... but the film industry can be a strange place, and even a giant like Hackman isn't always safe from behind-the-scenes meddling.

Hackman's fans in the U.S. might be surprised to discover that some of the actor's arguably finest work hasn't always been readily available, and one of his films was actually prevented from being released at one point. Said movie is "Eureka," director Nicolas Roeg's 1983 thriller about a successful Arctic prospector named Jack McCann (Hackman). His wealth and greed allow him to preside over his empire while living in a Caribbean paradise, but he slowly starts losing his grip as he starts suspecting that just about everyone in his life is out to get him. Let's take a look at what happened to the film. 

Apart from the excellent Hackman, "Eureka" featured names like Joe Pesci, Mickey Rourke, Rutger Hauer, and Theresa Russell, so you'd expect that this excellent psychological drama-turned-murder mystery would have a far more prominent place in cinema history than it actually does. Unfortunately, studio shenanigans stopped this from happening. 

"Eureka" has its share of extremely intense and brutal moments, which earned it the dreaded X rating in the U.S. market. This, in turn, freaked out United Artists, which ended up sitting on the movie until October 1984, when "Eureka" got its extremely disappointing theatrical release to the tune of a whopping $123,572 box office haul. The combination of the challenging rating and the studio's self-imposed shadow ban of the movie meant that "Eureka" never got to spread its wings properly. In a 1984 interview with The Los Angeles Times, director Nicolas Roeg lamented the situation and suspected that the film industry's desire for safer waters had condemned the film:

"Financial considerations within the industry have taken entertainment, which means something that is emotional, cerebral, amusing, exhilarating, and made it mean simply distracting. But perhaps in five years, this will all be different, in that nothing lasts forever."

Your mileage may vary on whether Roeg's wish that more adventurous filmmaking would make a comeback ever really happened for major studios, but one thing is certain: the crumbling central character of "Eureka" remains an under-appreciated and outright unseen gem among Hackman's many stellar roles.