Is Eliza Dushku's Career Over? Or Just About To Soar?

When the news broke yesterday that Eliza Dushku's first post-Dollhouse project would be a cheesy horror film stuffed with 90's has-beens (sorry!) James Van Der Beek and Freddie Prinze, Jr. a.k.a Mr. Sarah Michelle Gellar, I was so befuddled I didn't even want to post the news. I didn't want to add fuel to Michelle's hate or Bitsy's rants. Maybe they haven't looked on the internet today" I hoped. Please, these guys have every Whedonverse news sources known to the 'nets on their feed readers, so that thought was probably in vain. And the worst side effect was I couldn't stop comparing future on set rumors of a scandal between Eliza and Freddie, with Faith-as-Buffy having sex with Riley in Season 4's "Who Are You?" Blagh.

I don't even know why I was protecting Eliza so much. I came around to Dollhouse in the end, but I do think it took a lot of time away from our boy. She's beautiful, but I've yet to see a stellar acting performance. She's cool, but tends to announce it way too often, rendering her uncool in the process. Maybe the reason I cared was because she actually did an amazing thing with Dollhouse. She had a production deal with FOX that she actually made good on, no matter how it ended. A lot of people get production deals, but a lot of people can't woo Mr. Joss Whedon with Gouda Pizza. As Executive Producer, she probably called more shots than any of us realize over at the Dollhouse. And she took control of her career, which many 90's actors have been struggling to do. I'm looking at you Sarah Michelle Gellar, not that it's your fault.

So why the lame-ass horror movie? Maybe because there is no horror movie. AfterEllen blew the whole thing wide open today and it really made me question, was this just a vicious rumor? Evidence shows that Eliza and her Boston Divas Productions (I will say nothing about that) purchased the rights to the film almost a year ago. Eliza cast her brother Nate as the lead, playing photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. And as AfterEllen also pointed out, Eliza just tweeted yesterday that things were moving along with the project. Eliza speaks about it in this clip:

Something is definitely rotten in Denmark. We'll keep you posted.

Watch Eliza talk about the Mapplethorpe project back in October of 2009. in the clip below (around the 30 second mark.)

UPDATE: Thank goodness this rumor has been debunked by Eliza herself on Twitter.