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Serena (2015) is the third feature starring Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence to be released, but it wasn’t the third one they shot. Fresh off the success of Silver Linings Playbook (2012), the two filmed Serena, only to have it shelved for years before a 2015 release via VOD.

The leading duo have become big stars in the interim, with Lawrence featuring in The Hunger Games films, Cooper gaining acclaim with American Sniper (2014), and the couple finding another electric on-screen pairing in their second David O. Russell picture, American Hustle (2013). With all that success, Serena, directed by foreign film Academy Award-winner Susanne Bier (2010’s In a Better World), seems like it would be an instant hit - on paper.

The result has been the opposite. The film took years to be released, and when it finally showed up in 2014 at the London Film Festival, its endless critical massacre began. Serena will undoubtedly disappear as a footnote in both of its stars careers in years to come.

When interviewed about the delay, Bier chalks it up to “everyone being busy.”

There was a reported issue with overhead airplane noise present in the film’s recording - something that makes no sense for the time period. Dialogue needed re-recorded, and Lawrence was too busy with The Hunger Games.

This also led to complicated editing, and a bunch of different cuts of the film. Bradley Cooper even flew to Copenhagen to participate in the editing himself. And it’s editing that really butchered the final cut. It appears that anything which couldn’t be re-recorded or fixed was simply chopped up, resulting in a poorly-paced and unengaging final product. “The devastating extent of the editing is clear: key sequences are reduced to montages and numerous scenes stop just as they’re getting started. The editors have also excised anything that might qualify as rounded characterization or a coherent plot.” - The Economist

But those details aren’t the core of what forced the film into a few years of purgatory. Above all that, it seems production knew their final product simply wasn’t very good. As the caliber of its stars rose, expectations increased in tandem, and the filmmakers knew the project wasn’t going to deliver. An expectation had been established for the film’s leads, and Serena fell well below those expectations. Serena‘s eventual release on VOD as opposed to a wide theatrical release was their means of releasing the film without investing much additional cost in the project. After watching Serena, it’s pretty obvious why everyone involved was keen to pretend like the film didn’t exist.