What the Hell Is Cary Elwes Doing in a Movie Produced by Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire?

A movie called The Hyperions released a trailer this weekend. The film looks to be a superhero comedy with a deliberately low-budget, slightly campy 1960s aesthetic, and it also features Cary Elwes of Princess Bride and dragging Ted Cruz fame.

All of which is to say it looks kind of interesting, except for one huge, glaring issue. The very first title card in the trailer lets us know that the film is produced by The Daily Wire.

Here’s the plot via IMDB:

In 1960, Professor Ruckus Mandulbaum invented the Titan badge – a device that enables humans to have a particular super power. He took in three down-on-their-luck youths, creating an unusual family of superheroes and they quickly rose to fame and prestige. Over time, however, the commercial family fractured and the Professor replaced the team with a new set of super hero teens. Cut to 1979 when two of the original superheroes are all grown up and wanting their Titan badges back, even if it means robbing the Professor’s museum and taking a few hostages accidentally.

For the unfamiliar (I envy you), The Daily Wire is the extreme right-wing “news” site and media company founded by Ben Shapiro and director Jeremy Boreing. They’ve been branching out into film lately and actually spent much of the last week sending their Facebook minions after this very website by pretending not to know the difference between a film review and a trailer reaction.

Since they are ideological propagandists rather than actual creatives, Shapiro apparently thought the best way to garner attention for the premiere of their latest film (which, based on the trailer, looks very, very bad) was to publicly attack a small-ish, women-led pop culture site. Thanks for reading, Ben!

Back to the question at hand: Why the hell is Cary Elwes working with The Daily Wire? Well, it seems like he might be as surprised as the rest of us.

Pajiba explains:

The movie was originally bought by Saban Films last summer (if that name sounds familiar, Haim Saban basically co-wrote nearly every cartoon theme song every Millennial remembers from childhood, as well as popularizing tokusatsu shows in the USA through Power Rangers) who then sold it to The Daily Wire. It was also in post-production for three years, meaning it was made before the film side of TDW was even a thing.

So we can rest easy knowing Elwes didn’t knowingly sign up to do business with Ben Shapiro. And we’ll have to make do with the rest of Elwes’ extensive film catalog since absolutely no one here is willing to give any amount of time, energy, or money to supporting a Daily Wire project.

(via: Pajiba, image: screencap)