Razzie award winner embraces his work on Battlefield Earth

This month saw screenwriter J.D. Shapiro win the “Worst Movie of the Decade” Razzie for Battlefield Earth. The apparent Shakespeare cosplayer embraced the honour, and accepted the award in person. Now he’s taken to the internet to explain the strange series of events that led him to write what he now calls the “suckiest” movie of all time.

In 1994, Shapiro went to check out Scientology’s “Celebrity Center” in LA as a way to meet women. He didn’t find any lady targets, and luckily, he didn’t find cultism either, but the trip did end with a job offer: the Scientologists wanted to work with him to turn L. Ron Hubbard’s Battlefield Earth into a film.

Unfortunately for Shapiro, and anyone who saw the final product, Hubbard had left notes detailing how he wanted his book to look in movie form. John Travolta and his Scientologist crew pressured the movie studio to make extensive changes to Shapiro’s script, and he was fired for refusing to comply.

You can read Shapiro’s tale here.