The Clint Eastwood movie nobody wanted to make: “They weren’t nuts about it”
If you were to ask any actor at the beginning of their career who they would want to emulate, chances are they would say Clint Eastwood. A granite-jawed superstar actor in his youth who transitioned into a respected elder statesman, only to then have an entirely new lease on life as a director. He’s won pretty much every award going, fronted some of the biggest movies of all time, and established himself as a cultural icon all around the world.
Winning the coveted ‘Best Director’ prize at the Oscars is one hell of an achievement. It’s even more impressive to have won it more than once, but Eastwood is one of the few people who can claim this honour. He first impressed the Academy, with whom he’d had a rocky relationship, in 1993 for his work on Unforgiven. 12 years later, he repeated his performance with the boxing drama Million Dollar Baby, in which he played the trainer of the main character, Maggie Fitzgerald, famously played by Hilary Swank.
Speaking with Charlie Rose, Eastwood detailed the process of how this film – which also won ‘Best Picture’ – came together. “I went to Warner Brothers and said would you participate in this? And they looked at the script but they weren’t nuts about it,” he revealed. “They were a little afraid of it. And so I said I’m going to make this as the next picture however I do it, if I have to go out and borrow the money myself. So I took off and a few days later they called up and said we don’t want you to go somewhere else. So we’ll come in for half of it. We’ll split it with Lakeshore Entertainment. So that’s the way it came about.”
Lakeshore Entertainment was an independent production and distribution company that began in the 1990s. In those early days, they had little success, their biggest hit coming at the end of the decade with the romantic comedy Runaway Bride. Million Dollar Baby did gangbusters for their business, leading to much bigger projects further down the line. She’s the Man, Crank, and The Exorcism of Emily Rose all followed, bolstered in the 2010s with the likes of The Age of Adeline and The Lincoln Lawyer. They sold their library back in 2019.
“They had helped finance the writing of the script,” Eastwood said of Lakeshore. “They were kind of tied in but they couldn’t afford to do the whole thing. They said they would do part of it.” This is where Warner Bros came in. They must have been very glad they did.
Alongside the aforementioned Oscar victories, Million Dollar Baby also won prizes for Hilary Swank (‘Best Actress’) and Morgan Freeman (‘Best Supporting Actor’). Alongside its awards dominance, it also made over $200million at the box office against its modest $30 m budget. It is frequently cited as one of the greatest films of the 21st century so far, and was included in Parade’s list of the top 100 best movies of all time.
It’s impossible to tell in advance whether or not a movie will be a big hit, so it’s hard to blame Warner Bros. for initially bailing on Million Dollar Baby. Still, if it hadn’t been for Lakeshore taking a punt, they might have missed out on their greatest triumph.
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