The $12m role Owen Wilson refused to play: “You’ve got to be kidding me”
Most actors wouldn’t hesitate to accept a role that promised them an eight-figure payday, but Owen Wilson showed himself to be a man of principle when he refused to play a part that would have comfortably landed him the biggest salary of his entire career.
It no doubt helped soften the blow of losing out on millions of dollars that the actor already had millions of his own, having earned big bucks from starring in the likes of Pixar’s Cars trilogy, the Meet the Parents/Fockers franchise, The Big Year, and James L Brooks’ needlessly expensive How Do You Know, all of which rewarded him handsomely for his work.
Obviously, it’s stating the obvious to say that rich people are in a position to turn down things that would make them richer, but history has shown that even Hollywood’s most successful stars can be seduced into starring in an awful, awful film or two by the promise of having a truck full of cash backed into their driveway.
Actors can be paid a pittance for shite movies, too, just like they can make pennies for a masterpiece. While there were no guarantees that the project Wilson knocked back was destined to be universally panned, it would have been controversial at the very least, since the narrative was predicated on OJ Simpson being 100% innocent of his ex-wife’s murder.
The former NFL player and Naked Gun alum was acquitted, but it goes without saying that the trial was somewhat contentious. Writer and director Joshua Newton started shooting his picture, The Juice, with Boris Kodjoe and Charlotte Kirk as Simpson and Nicole Brown Simpson, but it still hasn’t been released, despite first being announced in 2013.
One of the key subplots followed Douglas McCann, an attorney who fully believed in Simpson’s innocence and was suckered into several of the conspiracy theories that supposedly exonerated him, and Newton knew exactly who he wanted to play the part. Unfortunately, his number one candidate wasn’t interested in the slightest.
“Owen Wilson was perfect for the role,” the filmmaker told The Hollywood Reporter. “I actually had a meeting with him in Santa Monica. Everybody loved the script. His agent wanted him to do it. We offered him $12 million. But at the end of the lunch, Owen stood up and said, ‘If you think I’m going to take the lead role in a movie about how OJ didn’t do it, you’ve got to be kidding me.'”
There are no prizes for guessing why his agents were so keen for him to sign on the dotted line and play McCann in The Juice, since they’d have earned a tasty percentage of that $12 million. However, even though he gave Newton the courtesy of a meeting, it sounds like there was no chance he was ever going to consider it.
More than a dozen years after its inception, The Juice is no closer to completion. At this point, the smartest idea would be to simply scrap the whole thing, because if it hasn’t been finished by now, then it’s unlikely that it’ll ever happen.
