Samuel L Jackson, Laurence Fishburne and Bruce Willis: The awkward lawsuit at the heart of ‘Die Hard’
Based on his status as the highest-grossing actor in the history of cinema with a filmography that’s fast closing in on $30 billion, any nameworthy franchise in Hollywood would be thrilled to recruit Samuel L Jackson to inject the action-packed proceedings with his effortless cool and charismatic gravitas.
One follow-up to an all-time classic certainly was, but the downside was that it instigated a courtroom battle. The industry is full of domino effects that have the potential to rewrite the course of cinematic history, and it’s Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction that sits squarely in the middle of this one.
The filmmaker revealed that he’d originally offered the role of Jules Winnfield to Laurence Fishburne, who turned it down because he wasn’t won over by the content of the screenplay. Of course, Jackson was hired instead and delivered an iconic performance that was integral to securing Pulp Fiction‘s iconic status, even if he was captured on camera looking seriously pissed off that he didn’t win an Academy Award for his unforgettable work.
At the same time, Bruce Willis was gearing up to reprise his signature role of John McClane for a third time in Die Hard with a Vengeance, with original director John McTiernan back behind the camera and refitting the one-man army template of the first two into a buddy caper that partnered the grizzled police officer up with store owner Zeus Carver.
That part was written specifically for Fishburne to play, but when producer Andrew Vajna attended the premiere of Pulp Fiction at the Cannes Film Festival in 1994, he was so blown away by Jackson’s turn that he decided to ditch his original choice completely and put an offer out, even though Fishburne had already verbally agreed to be the second lead in Die Hard with a Vengeance.
Feeling suitably jilted by the collapse of what was going to be a high-paying gig in a major mainstream action extravaganza, Fishburne filed a lawsuit against production company Cinergi for breaking the verbal contract, which constituted Willis being handed a legal summons in the midst of the red carpet premiere of then-wife Demi Moore’s HBO anthology film If These Walls Could Talk because his would-be co-star claimed that he’d been present at a meeting where he was promised the part of Carver.
In an interview with Vulture, Fishburne clarified that he wasn’t almost part of the cast, but “I was already cast in Die Hard 3 and then at the 11th hour they were like, ‘Nah, we got Jackson.'” As tends to be the case more often than not in Tinseltown, the soon-to-be Morpheus of The Matrix believes that money was the motivating factor, for he was commanding a higher fee than Jackson at the time.
“I’m sure that was about money, because I was probably getting more money than Sam then, that was about money then,” he continued. “I had a whole lawsuit for two years against Cinergi Pictures behind that.” Although he admitted his court action “wasn’t public knowledge,” he did at least confirm “I got compensated for that” to ensure his attachment to Die Hard with a Vengeance wasn’t entirely for nothing.
