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CINEMA

Jean-Claude Van Damme admits that this decision started the decline of his career: “I was blacklisted”

The famous martial arts movie star demanded much more than what Universal was willing to pay for a Timecop trilogy.

Timecop Van Damme

Jean-Claude Van Damme is one of the biggest names in action and martial arts cinema from the 1980s and the early ‘90s. He left us with true genre classics such as Bloodsport, Kickboxer, Lionheart, Double Impact, Universal Soldier, Hard Target, and Timecop, among many others, not to mention cult favorites like Street Fighter: The Last Battle and Cyborg. No matter what, he will always be remembered despite his evident decline in the film industry from the late ‘90s onward. And one of the key reasons for that decline was, in his own words, “I was blacklisted.” That’s what he revealed in an interview with The Guardian years ago.

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Van Damme’s Greed and the Beginning of His Downfall

The actor explained that he once had the chance to solidify his career with a planned trilogy of one of his most well-received films: Timecop. Back in 1994, just before hitting theaters with the unusual adaptation of Street Fighter, Van Damme starred in Timecop, directed by Peter Hyams. In the film, he played Max Walker, a law enforcement officer in a world where time travel is possible. Today, the movie is considered a sci-fi classic and was a major box office success at the time.

Timecop Van Damme
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Jean-Claude Van Damme en 'Timecop' (1994)

According to Van Damme, Universal was eager to turn Timecop into a trilogy after the first film grossed over $100 million worldwide, an impressive figure for a film of its kind in that era. However, the studio offered him $12 million per movie, and he wanted $20 million per film.

That demand turned out to be his biggest mistake. Although he insists it wasn’t greed but rather a fair request based on his box office appeal, he now admits, “Everything I touched turned into money, so I wanted to play the system—like an idiot.” After making his demand, Universal executives simply hung up on him while he heard them laughing in the background. “They blacklisted me,” Van Damme recalled. From that moment on, his career took a downward spiral. Once an action movie superstar, he was soon relegated to being seen as a second-tier actor.

Timecop is currently available in Spain on streaming platforms such as Prime Video, Filmin, Movistar Plus+, and Apple TV+.

*This article was written in Spanish and translated with the help of AI.