Who paid nearly $4 million for leaving a bizarre drama?
Which Academy Award winner was legally forced to costar with a dinosaur in a buddy cop comedy?
These actors all got sued for bailing on movies they'd previously agreed to star in.
Evan Rachel Wood, star of HBO's hit science-fiction drama "Westworld,"
signed up in 2012 to star in a follow-up to the hit teen rom-com "10 Things I Hate About You."
The original film starred Julia Stiles as a misanthropic teen who's set up on a date
with a local bad boy played by Heath Ledger. The follow-up, "10 Things I Hate About Life,"
was going to be more of a spiritual successor than a direct sequel. It would have told the
story of two teens who fall in love at the darkest point in their lives.
MCU star Hayley Atwell was originally signed up for the lead, but was replaced by Wood ahead of
production. After months of filming, the project lost Wood as well when she dropped out while the
production was reportedly low on funds. Producers turned around and sued the actress for a whopping
$30 million, claiming that without her, they were on the hook for tens of millions in lost revenue.
The actress's camp didn't back down, stating that the studio
and producers were to blame. Her lawyers said in a statement,
"The lawsuit is preposterous and simply a bullying tactic from financially troubled producers.
The production shut down in February 2013 when the producers ran out of money."
While the suit has yet to be resolved nearly a decade later, only a single trailer for the
project has been released to this day. But who knows, maybe the film will come out someday.
"'Someday' sounds a lot like the thing people say when they actually mean 'never.'"
After a downturn in his career during the late 1980s and early '90s,
"Saturday Night Fever" star John Travolta returned to the A-List with his role in
Quentin Tarantino's 1994 classic crime caper "Pulp Fiction." From there,
the hits kept coming, including "Get Shorty," "Broken Arrow," and "Face/Off."
Around the same time, controversial director Roman Polanski was readying a new film titled
"The Double" and was eying Travolta to star in the picture. Based on the classic novel
by Dostoyevsky, the story follows a man whose exact double begins to encroach on his own life.
Unfortunately for Polanski, it was a rocky road getting the star to play along. The
Irish Times reported that Travolta and Polanski clashed on set during rehearsals in France,
eventually leading to the actor quitting the film just before production was to begin.
Entertainment Tonight claimed that it was the addition of risqué scenes at the last
minute that drew Travolta's ire, but whatever the case, the studio struck the star with a lawsuit
for walking out. Travolta slapped the studio with a countersuit, claiming they'd reneged on
an agreement for him to star in "Donnie Brasco," but the matter was settled out of court in 2001.
"The Double" was never produced, but a different adaptation of the
Dostoyevsky story was released in 2013, with Jesse Eisenberg in the lead role.
The 1968 drama "Blue" starred Terence Stamp as the titular bandit raised by a Mexican revolutionary
named Ortega. Blue's loyalties are torn when Ortega and his gang begin raiding American
outposts along the border. As good as he is in the role, Stamp — who may be best known
today as General Zod in the original "Superman" movies — was not the original actor the studio
wanted to play the role of Blue. That honor went to Hollywood legend Robert Redford.
Then an emerging screen star, Redford was just a year away from his career-defining
performance in the classic Western "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid."
But in 1968, the actor was all set to go before the cameras as the bandit Blue when he suddenly
quit the movie before filming had begun. Unhappy to lose their big lead, Paramount
Pictures swiftly sued the star for breach of contract. By some accounts, it was actually this
lawsuit that prevented Roman Polanski from casting Robert Redford — his first choice,
according to IndieWire — for the male lead in Paramount's "Rosemary's Baby" just a year later.
Thankfully, though, they would settle their differences relatively amicably,
and the whole situation ended on a somewhat positive note. To avoid a lengthy court battle,
the actor agreed to appear in three more pictures for them, including "Little Fauss and Big Halsy."
If you've ever seen or even heard of the '90s family film "Theodore Rex,"
you probably know exactly why Oscar-winner Whoopi Goldberg wanted out of the production.
Set in a bizarre alternate universe where anthropomorphic dinosaurs live among humans,
Goldberg played police officer Katie Coltrane. Paired with a dinosaur detective,
she investigates a rash of linked dinosaur murders — or "dinocides." The trail leads
them to the sadistic scientist Elizar Kane, who intends to bring about a new ice age.
Goldberg was legally forced to star in "Theodore Rex" after she attempted to leave the picture.
Though it seems she never actually signed on the dotted line, the studio took her to court
over backing out of a "verbal contract" to appear. According to the Los Angeles Times,
Goldberg had agreed to star in the film for $5 million and a percentage
of profits in November of 1992, but backed out just a few months later.
"Straighten up and fly right. This is your chance for a comeback. Don't blow it."
"He's a dinosaur!"
The two sides eventually settled their deal, and Whoopi went on to make the movie — much to her
everlasting displeasure. Thanks in large part to its mammoth budget,
the film was a resounding failure, and it wasn't released until 1996
when it hit shelves as a direct-to-video release. With the movie getting a whopping
0% on Rotten Tomatoes, perhaps the studio should have let her walk away after all.
Directed by Jennifer Chambers Lynch, daughter of "Twin Peaks" creator David Lynch,
the 1993 thriller "Boxing Helena" is every bit as weird as you might expect. The film
stars Julian Sands as a twisted doctor who rescues a young woman from a car accident
and quickly becomes obsessed with her. In escalating attempts to keep her in his care,
he slowly begins amputating various parts of her body as she desperately tries to get away.
Before Sherilyn Fenn joined the project as Helena, however, at least two other
major Hollywood stars had been attached, with Kim Basinger having officially signed on to the film.
But just weeks before cameras were set to roll on the picture,
Basinger walked out of the movie, apparently unhappy with the script and the required nudity.
Even though writers had attempted to polish the script to appease her, it wasn't enough,
and the studio wound up bringing her to court over her refusal to star in the film.
They couldn't pay her enough to come back, and Sherilyn Fenn was brought in to replace her.
Though the film wound up a box office bomb despised by audiences, the studio got what
they wanted from Basinger. After a drawn-out, four-year court battle, Basinger paid up to
the tune of $3.8 million — more than twice what "Boxing Helena" pulled in at the ticket counter.
German actor Dieter Laser had barely dipped his toe into the waters of Hollywood films
before 2009, mostly working on movies in his native Germany. He was barely recognizable
to American audiences, but that all changed when he took the starring role of Dr. Heiter
in the infamous Dutch body horror film "The Human Centipede." Despite not appearing in the sequel,
he signed up for the third film, "The Human Centipede 3," in 2012 to round out the trilogy.
In March of that year, Laser got into a dispute with producers and abruptly quit the project.
Producers claimed, in a statement reported by Entertainment Weekly:
"Mr. Dieter Laser's ego has grown to laughably big proportions."
The Hollywood Reporter released a statement from Laser,
with the actor claiming that he'd signed on without a script. When the final draft
arrived — some six months late — he was unsatisfied with his character as written.
"We are not in a movie, playing some idiots!"
In the end, the studio dropped its lawsuit when Laser and producers worked out a deal to craft an
entirely new character for him to play, a sadistic prison warden named Bill Boss. Though it delayed
production even further — and the release of the film by about a year — fans got their beloved
star back in the gross-out threequel. Whether it was worth all the trouble is a matter of debate,
as the film was lambasted by reviewers and made just $16,000 domestically.
Action movie superstar Bruce Willis had conquered every mountain he'd ever climbed,
be it television, action movies, dramas, comedies, and beyond. In 2008, the actor sought to embark
on a new career as a director and put together a project called "Three Stories About Joan."
Willis would have starred in the psychological thriller alongside Owen Wilson and Kieran Culkin,
and it seemed to have all the ingredients to make a big splash in cinemas.
Unfortunately, things went south quickly when Willis quit the film in September of that year,
only five weeks into pre-production on the picture.
According to the studio, he clearly violated the terms of his contract as star and director,
leaving with no notice. He was sued for $4 million in a Los Angeles court, but that certainly wasn't
the end of the tale. Willis himself had a very different version of events, claiming that the
studio had failed to secure the needed financing as was laid out in their agreement. As reported in
The Guardian, the actor and almost-director turned around and countersued for a jaw-dropping sum
of $8.7 million, claiming that he had put aside other lucrative projects to focus on "Joan."
The studio dropped the suit in 2010, perhaps intimidated by Willis' countersuit.
Sadly, the actor never did get his chance to direct a feature film before
his retirement in 2022, leaving his dream of sitting behind the camera unfulfilled.
The 1954 historical drama "The Egyptian" starred Edmund Purdom, Michael Wilding,
and Peter Ustinov in the story of an ancient doctor and an injured Pharaoh named Akhnaton.
After nursing him back to health, the young ruler makes the doctor his court physician.
Originally planned to have starred Marlon Brando, fresh off of "A Streetcar Named Desire"
and "Julius Caesar," 20th Century Fox had high hopes for the big-budget epic.
Once again though, just days before filming was set to begin on the massive picture,
Brando left the set and would never return. Brando claimed he only left so he could go
home to New York to see his therapist, but the studio wasn't happy with his excuse.
Rather than accommodate the actor's medical needs, they sued him for breach of contract
for as much as $2 million. To settle the dispute, Brando agreed to star in another picture for them,
"Desiree," which he later claimed to have put minimal effort into.
Thankfully, the ordeal did little to tarnish Brando's career. He'd go on to star in "On the
Waterfront" in lieu of "The Egyptian" and win an Academy Award for his performance.
"You're a cheap, lousy, dirty stinking mug! And I'm glad what I done to you. You hear that?"
"Benny & Joon" was a quirky early 1990s romantic comedy that paired rising star Johnny Depp with
actress Mary Stuart Masterson, netting the young Depp a number of award nominations.
Believe it or not, though, the film almost had a very different cast.
Originally slated to star were "Cheers" veteran Woody Harrelson and future "Jurassic Park" actress
Laura Dern — but before she signed on the dotted line, Dern walked away. Harrelson had already
signed the contract for his role in the film but still did the same, quitting the film to take
a lead role in the controversial drama "Indecent Proposal." He was hit with a lawsuit for doing so.
Years later, in a joint interview with his near-co-star,
Harrelson would claim that it was Dern's exit that prompted his. He told her:
"Once I knew you weren't in ["Benny & Joon"], that was that."
Dern went on to star in "Jurassic Park" instead, and "Indecent Proposal" went
on to become a big hit too. Though "Benny & Joon" never had the same success ticket-wise,
it was well-loved, positively reviewed, and a stepping stone in Depp's enormous career.
As for the lawsuit, it was apparently settled out of court for an amount
reported by the Los Angeles Times to have been "less than $500,000," It seems the
studio may not have been looking to make an enemy of the Hollywood star after all.