LisBerger and Kurtz had been involved in Tron, Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back, American Graffiti, Dark Crystal-

They had Mark Hamill, Bill Paxton,  and Robert Peck.

A Road Warrior/Blade Runner set up,

And could not even pull off a US theatrical release,
When movies like Gor and They Live got releases.  If you got a film together, it could be shown.  Hell, Gor got a sequel after a $160K theatrical run.  They Live kicked ass and made a ten million profit over its 4M budget.

But Slipstream did not even get a solid  straight to video release.
Hell, even Samurai Cop need up going from video to DVD and even a BluRay release.

Slipstream had potential to be a much better film.  It has serious players involved.  What went so wrong?

It sucked?

Why yes, it did.

That’s sort of the point of the question.

Everyone involved has done way better work and would not have been expected to end up with this.

Money?

I remember that movie, yeah it had so much promise and sucked big time.

looking back through my fuzzy memory, I honestly think the people in charge either didn't know or couldn't agree on what they wanted the movie to be, or maybe there was interference from the studio. So you wound up with a mish mash pile of shit.

I could be wrong, I have no inside information on it just my impression after seeing it and being surprised it sucked so badly.

I never saw the movie in question but I watched a documentary about the original Star Wars and how some brilliant editing made an otherwise meh movie a success.  Sometimes the quality of the actors, story, or production do not equal success with the final product.