The indie thriller Wake, which achieved casting brilliance when it placed Bruce Willis in the role of a relentless violence machine incapable of feeling or expressing human emotion, is now facing a production shutdown due to lack of funds. The second film from The Quiet Ones director John Pogue, Wake tells the tale of a man (Willis) who returns to defend the community that once cast him out for his violent ways—or at least it will, if producer Benaroya Pictures can pull together enough money to bring Willis and co-stars Ben Kingsley, Ellen Burstyn, and Piper Perabo back to the Midwest to finish filming it. According to no less prestigious a source than the Greater Cleveland Film Commission, the company claims that it should have the money to resume filming within two to three weeks, presumably saying so as its employees frantically brainstorm a bunch of plans for a bank heist or a diamond robbery—you know, the sort of things you’d do to get a bunch of cash in a Bruce Willis movie, provided you had enough money to make one in the first place.



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