Everyone knows that the right star can make or break a movie — and sometimes that's literally true, too. Here are some of the actors who have single-handedly doomed a project to development hell.
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00:00Everyone knows that the right star can make or break a movie, and sometimes that's literally
00:05true, too.
00:06Here are some of the actors who have single-handedly doomed a project to development hell.
00:11After Pulp Fiction saved John Travolta's failing career, the actor went through a renaissance
00:15for the ages, eventually affording him the kind of success that most actors barely see
00:20in their lives.
00:21We happy?
00:22Yeah, we happy.
00:25He was having such good fortune, in fact, that in 1996, he felt emboldened to walk away
00:31from a potential $17 million paycheck and risk a huge lawsuit in the process.
00:36The movie in question was The Double, to be directed by Roman Polanski, based on the 1847
00:42Deustche Wies' novel of the same name.
00:44Creative differences between Travolta and Polanski flared up from the very first table
00:48read.
00:49Travolta later told Paris Match,
00:51Our views on the film were completely different.
00:53I wanted to do a dramatic comedy.
00:56Polanski wanted a cartoon.
00:57At the first reading, Roman didn't like my acting.
00:59He told me I was bad and showed me what I should do.
01:02The last straw for Travolta was that Polanski decided to add a nude scene for no apparent
01:06reason.
01:07This caused Travolta to quit the movie, which led to production companies Mandalay Entertainment
01:11and Light Offer suing him.
01:13Travolta countersued, saying that the company failed to honor a deal for him to star in
01:17Donnie Brasco, which was finally released in 1997.
01:20The Double, meanwhile, was never made.
01:22The suit was eventually settled out of court.
01:26Arrive Alive seemed to have everything going for it when it was first announced in 1989.
01:29A script from the duo who penned the subversive holiday hit Scrooged, the director of National
01:34Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, and top lead talents in Willem Dafoe and Joan Cusack.
01:39It was to be a noir-rom-com hybrid starring Dafoe as a detective and Cusack as his exotic
01:44dancer-female foil.
01:46But to make the obvious joke, Arrive Alive did anything but that.
01:50It seems that Paramount ordered the movie based on the talent and premise alone, and
01:54wasn't fully prepared for how dark the script turned out to be.
01:57It was so dark, in fact, that Bill Murray of all people turned down a lead role due
02:01to the excessive violence in the script.
02:03When the studio saw the dailies from the first few weeks of filming, it demanded that slapstick
02:07comedy elements were added to the movie to liven things up.
02:10Murray would have pulled that off just fine.
02:12Dafoe, however, wasn't confident in his slapstick comedy abilities and subsequently quit the
02:17movie.
02:18Only 18 days into shooting, production on Arrive Alive was shut down, and when a replacement
02:23for Dafoe couldn't be found, it was canned for good.
02:26One of Will Ferrell's breakout roles on Saturday Night Live was his portrayal of President
02:30George W. Bush, which became the basis of his Broadway show, You're Welcome, America.
02:34"...I did it for him because he would have done it for him.
02:39It's called bipartisanship."
02:43Given his long-term success playing an exaggerated version of a former president, it might not
02:48be a surprise that Ferrell considered doing it again in 2016.
02:51However, things were a little bit different for Reagan, a movie Ferrell was announced
02:55to be producing as well as starring in.
02:57The film was set to see Ferrell play the U.S. president throughout the bulk of the 1980s.
03:01It was also revealed that the movie would have seen Ferrell perform as Reagan in the
03:05later years of his presidency, seemingly poking fun at the Alzheimer's-induced dementia that
03:09Reagan was beginning to suffer around the time.
03:12This sparked a significant backlash from not only the Alzheimer's Association, but also
03:16Reagan's children, Michael Reagan and Patti Davis.
03:19Davis took things further when she penned an open letter via The Daily Beast in which
03:23she severely condemned the planned movie for making light of the disease.
03:27She wrote,
03:28"...perhaps you have managed to retain some ignorance about Alzheimer's and other versions
03:32of dementia.
03:33Perhaps if you knew more you would not find the subject humorous."
03:35Unsurprisingly, Ferrell dropped out of Reagan just two days after the ill-advised film was
03:40announced.
03:41The movie was canned soon after.
03:42Tony Jaa
03:43Tony Jaa had been kicking around for a while before 2003's Ongbak Waitai Warrior put him
03:48on the map.
03:49In addition to helping introduce both the art of Muay Thai as well as Thai cinema to
03:52the world, the biggest impact of Ongbak was arguably the fact that it announced the arrival
03:57of the film's newest action star.
03:58However, it would be over a decade before Jaa made his Hollywood debut in 2015's Furious
04:037.
04:04Going to Hollywood was a childhood dream, the actor told reporters at the time.
04:08It was in making the leap to this uber-popular action franchise that Jaa reportedly got another
04:13movie canceled.
04:14At the time, Jaa had already been working on a movie called A Man Will Rise with a Thailand-based
04:18production company.
04:19The company claimed that Jaa breached his contract by leaving the film with only 20
04:23percent of it completed, insisting that the actor give back the money already paid to
04:27him for the project.
04:28The film was never finished, while Jaa went on to star in several action movies in the
04:32years that followed.
04:33Arnold Schwarzenegger
04:34According to Essentially Sports, Arnold Schwarzenegger pioneered the comic book superhero physique
04:38in Hollywood.
04:39So why, then, has he barely been involved with comic book adaptations over the years?
04:43Well, if things had gone a little differently, his wild role as Mr. Freeze in 1997's Batman
04:48& Robin wouldn't have been his first attempt to bring a comic book character to the big
04:52screen.
04:53Very nice.
04:57Back in the 1980s, Steven E. DeSouza, who penned the screenplays for the Schwarzenegger
05:02films Commando and The Running Man, was all lined up to work with the actor a third time.
05:06Sgt.
05:07Rock was based on the DC Comics World War II soldier character of the same name, and
05:10DeSouza had Arnie in mind for the title role.
05:13The project would have also re-teamed Schwarzenegger with his Predator director, John McTiernan.
05:17The film collapsed, however, when Schwarzenegger was informed that he'd have to travel to Europe
05:22for the shoot.
05:23He had been assured that production would take place in the U.S., so he walked, and
05:26Sgt.
05:27Rock was no more.
05:28Years later, DeSouza told Den of Geek,
05:30"...the fact that Arnold didn't make the movie and didn't get sued makes me think that somewhere
05:34there must have been a binding memo from a lawyer or from within the studio confirming
05:38that he was promised a U.S. shoot.
05:40So that's why the movie came to a complete halt."
05:43The cycling website Podium Café refers to The Yellow Jersey as
05:46"...the cycling film Hollywood loved but could never make."
05:49Only cycling enthusiasts are likely to have ever heard of it, and since nobody has ever
05:53managed to actually produce a film version of Ralph Hearn's 1973 novel, The Yellow Jersey,
05:58it's likely to stay that way for a long time.
06:00The film rights to the novel were first acquired the year it was released, but it wasn't until
06:041983 that any measurable work on the film had really gotten underway.
06:08At that point, however, The Yellow Jersey finally found its leading actor, Dustin Hoffman,
06:12At the time, Hoffman said,
06:14"...the book is about the last moment of your youth, and I think that's the way I feel now
06:17about myself.
06:18Actors say, if I'm going to die, let it be on stage.
06:21This guy says, if I'm going to die, let it be while trying to make this curve.
06:25I think I can relate to that."
06:26Three years and over a million dollars later, not a single frame of film had been shot.
06:31When director Michael Cimino left the project, producers suggested multiple replacements,
06:35none of whom Hoffman liked.
06:37Hoffman eventually got fed up with the troubled production and walked away, sealing the film's
06:41fate for good.
06:42When the circumstances of Bruce Willis' retirement became clear, most people stopped giving the
06:47actor a hard time for pumping out so many forgettable direct-to-video flicks in the
06:512010s and early 2020s.
06:53"...You look so stupid with that pen in your neck."
06:56Given the reason he wanted to make so many movies, it was obviously in his best interest
07:00to tough it out and actually finish any film that he started.
07:03So it would definitely be saying something for there to have been a film during that
07:06period that Willis actually decided to walk away from.
07:10That movie was called Wake, and it entered production in 2015, with Willis attached to
07:14star.
07:15The action-thriller had only been in production for 10 days, when financing issues led to
07:18a quick halt on filming.
07:20That halt was only supposed to last about a month, but then the proposed restart date
07:24came and went without any positive news.
07:26Eventually, it seems, Willis got tired of waiting for the movie to find its money and
07:30moved on to other projects, as did director John Pogue.
07:33Without Willis attached, Wake was less likely than ever to get the financing it needed to
07:37resume production, and unsurprisingly, it never did.
07:41If the director of 10 Things I Hate About You made another film called 10 Things I Hate
07:45About Life, you'd probably assume it was going to be a sequel.
07:48And you'd be wrong.
07:49In fact, other than them both being rom-coms, there seems to be very little that tied you
07:53to Life other than Gil Younger and producer Andrew Lazar.
07:5610 Things I Hate About Life actually promised to be as dark as its title suggested.
08:00It was going to be about two people who meet while trying to take their own lives, before
08:04subsequently embarking on a romance.
08:06It definitely would have been interesting to see a rom-com built on such a downer premise,
08:10but alas, it doesn't look like we ever will.
08:13Production got underway in 2012, but the double dose of corporate drama and the pregnancy
08:18of star Evan Rachel Wood put filming on hiatus.
08:21By 2014, news had begun to circulate that Wood was refusing to return to the production,
08:26with the actor claiming that she'd yet to be paid for the work she'd already done.
08:29This was in response to producers suing Wood for $30 million for a breach of contract for
08:33not showing up, a move that her legal team called preposterous.
08:37As a result of Wood's departure and all that legal wrangling, the movie quickly fell apart.
08:42John Wayne
08:43John Wayne did a few comedies in his time, but he was never willing to poke fun at the
08:46film genre that made him famous, and this once led to a film being shut down.
08:50When Peter Bogdanovich was first getting started as a filmmaker, he teamed with novelist Larry
08:54McMurtry to write a script about the final days of the American West.
08:58The movie, to be titled Streets of Laredo, would have taken playful jabs at the various
09:02tropes of the genre, which is the part that John Wayne took umbrage with.
09:06Don Graham, a professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin, later told
09:10Texas Monthly,
09:11"...John Wayne wasn't going to lend himself to a total critique of the genre he'd been
09:15working in for 40 years.
09:17He wasn't going to make Blazing Saddles."
09:19When Wayne bowed out of the film, it all fell apart.
09:30Streets of Laredo
09:31Streets of Laredo had been written with Wayne in mind, after all.
09:32McMurtry would later dust off some of the ideas he had devised for Streets of Laredo
09:36for his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Lonesome Dove, which was adapted into a hit miniseries
09:41starring Robert Duvall.
09:42The book itself eventually received a follow-up, called, you guessed it, Streets of Laredo.
09:47Rihanna
09:48Rihanna Ryder's career was in a weird spot when the new millennium rolled around.
09:51She might have just come off her role in The Buzzy Girl Interrupted in 1999, but 2000's
09:56Lost Souls was savaged by critics.
09:582001, meanwhile, saw her receive her infamous conviction for shoplifting, as well as her
10:02somewhat mysterious exit from an indie drama called Lily and the Secret Planting.
10:07The movie was set to star Ryder as an introvert who develops a relationship with the assistant
10:11of a planned nursery owner.
10:13With a proposed budget of only $5 million, it was definitely going to be a scaled-down
10:17production, and Ryder was very excited about the project.
10:20However, she ended up getting extremely sick on set.
10:23Only a month after her involvement was announced, news stories emerged suggesting that Ryder
10:27had quit the film as a result of her recovery from her sickness.
10:30Initially, it was suggested that Kate Winslet had been asked to take over from Ryder, but
10:34that never came to fruition, and without a big-name lead attached, Lily and the Secret
10:39Planting withered and died.