Ice Cube reveals what went wrong with War of the Worlds

Last month, Amazon quietly dropped a new adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds, and it’s already being called the internet’s favorite bad movie of 2025. Starring Ice Cube, the film unfolds entirely through computer screens and includes a scene where the world is saved by—yes—an Amazon drone pilot. Critics weren’t impressed, and now, Ice Cube has shed some light on how the bizarre project came to be.

During a recent livestream marathon with popular content creator Kai Cenat, Ice Cube stopped by to chat about his career and upcoming projects. Naturally, War of the Worlds came up. While Cenat didn’t outright call it a bad movie, the tone made it clear, and Cube didn’t defend it much either.

“[It’s] a movie I did in 2020 during the pandemic, five years ago,” Cube explained. “We shot it in 15 days. The director wasn’t there, the actors weren’t there — this was the only way we could shoot it during the pandemic.”

That explains the film’s all-on-screens format. Cube added, “But really, if shit went down, everybody would only have their screen to look at.”

As for why the film only saw release in 2025, Cube said the post-production process dragged on. After Universal sold the rights to Amazon, the team struggled with how to assemble the final product. “The movie is shot, the actors are shot, but all the footage is from real surveillance cameras around the world,” Cube claimed. “They had to build all that shit. So yeah, it took a minute.”

Though some viewers suspect the film used stock footage or cheap licensed assets, Ice Cube’s version suggests an ambitious—if very unconventional—approach to a low-budget, pandemic-era production.