Joaquin Phoenix’s abrupt departure from a gay romance film has reportedly sparked “huge outrage” in Hollywood and could lead to legal action.
The Joker star was set to lead the untitled detective love story – that he had taken to director Todd Haynes in the first place – but five days before production was scheduled to begin, he made the last-minute decision to drop out of the film after getting “cold feet”, a source told Variety.
Entire sets had been built in Guadalajara, Mexico, where shooting had been due to take place. Phoenix abandoned the project in early July just days before the scheduled shoot, leaving cast and crew in the lurch.
Now, reports are emerging that legal action could ensue, after the decision sparked backlash from industry veterans.
“There’s been a huge amount of outrage,” one studio executive told The Hollywood Reporter. The publication cited sources suggesting the decision could lead to legal action.
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Produced by Killer Films and backed by sales agent MK2 Film, Phoenix’s movie had already been sold to international distributors. Variety further reports that the actor’s role cannot be recast, leaving the crew out of work and investors unpaid, and meaning that losses could surpass seven figures.
“The actors role cannot be recast” the fuck you mean lol
It’s related to financing. The funding was contractually tied to having Phoenix in the role. So if they can find another actor with enough pull, maybe they can recast?
Phoenix was also a co-writer, so who knows what happens next.
You have to wonder what really went down. Also this dude is always pulling stunts for publicity so who knows.
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He’s probably not poor, but I doubt he has entire movie budgets worth of money lying around in cash.
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My guess is they used his involvement to sell it to distributors. It says they have already made deals for international markets, likely getting more than they would have with a different actor.
I kinda get that. If they have no big name actor the movie is already dead, which is the unfortunate reality for a lot of movies these days.
Sounds like he was the guy pushing for the movie to be made in the first place as well, so maybe there’s no interest from other names to replace him.
Variety further reports that the actor’s role cannot be recast
… what?
Look, I get when contracts say the studio can’t unilaterally ditch a major actor, but when someone is fired for cause or fucking quits then any concern about depriving them of their involvement is moot.
He’s not being excluded. He left. If the paperwork doesn’t cover that, fire your lawyers.
Too bad he didn’t do that for Napoleon.
I wonder why the role can’t be recast?
My guess is that it’s because this is his project - he originally brought the idea to the director and they worked it up into a script from there. So Phoenix probably has a lot of paperwork saying he can’t be replaced and the distributors that have bought it likely have contracts that would prevent a bait-and-switch change of lead after they’ve paid for the rights.
I didn’t realize it was his, that would make sense! Now I’m even more curious why he would pull out of the project
I think that might all come out in the lawsuit but the THR report they mention says:
The actor is indeed known to get cold feet ahead of filming on various projects. Two sources tell THR that he threatened to leave Ridley Scott’s Napoleon unless his The Master filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson was brought in to do rewrites. Placated, he stayed aboard the project, and it arrived in theaters late last year.
As Phoenix once told 60 Minutes’ Anderson Cooper, he’s usually “petrified” when he takes on a role and that before he shoots, he’s “nervous” that he won’t be able to “find the right kind of place to express” his ideas.
The fact that it contains gay sex scenes has been suggested as a contributing factor too. It might seem a great idea in the planning stages but for someone so method, he might have been struggling to get into the right head-space as the start of filming was looking.
Worth reading this: Joaquin Phoenix’s One-Man Cult of Depressive Method-Acting Vanity. It shows what an unusual space he works in and it seems very… fragile.
Worth reading this: Joaquin Phoenix’s One-Man Cult of Depressive Method-Acting Vanity. It shows what an unusual space he works in and it seems very… fragile.
Hadn’t heard this before, but it’s funny how it immediately explains the energy he always seems to have in a role.
Interesting, I wonder what his reasoning was.
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@Emperor It’s hard to make this fit into any sort of narrative.
Is he “homophobic” and intentionally trying to screw people over? Or, did he try to push the boundaries of what he could do and realized too late that he wouldn’t be comfortable doing this and decided to just bail?
Will the left praise him for not putting himself in a sexually vulnerable position he wasn’t willing to be in?
I don’t think it’ll easily fit into a conventional narrative. As you can see from other replies I’ve made here, he has done this before and, while it could previously have been chalked up to a power move for greater control, this is his project. It seems far more likely that this is pre-filming nerves combined with his not getting into the right head-space for the character. I imagine his team might talk him round as this would be a reputational disaster but we’ll see.
Will the left praise him for not putting himself in a sexually vulnerable position he wasn’t willing to be in?
That seems unlikely. They’ll probably chastise him for not being comfortable with it. I’ll gladly eat my hat if I’m wrong.
