Emily Blunt’s worst movie also cost her $60million: “It was a bit of a heartbreaker”
If ever there was a case study in always reading the fine print in a contract, it’s the horrible situation Emily Blunt was forced into in 2009.
Only three years removed from catching the eye of everyone in Hollywood with her hilariously biting supporting role in The Devil Wears Prada, and before she’d be on the map, snowballing into high-profile gigs alongside stars like Tom Hanks, Steve Carell, and Amy Adams, her vitality and easy charisma onscreen were enough to blow everyone out the water. So, it wasn’t a surprise when a potential part in a blockbuster sequel slunk into her orbit. Suddenly, the chance to snatch that true A-list status was there for the taking.
To her delight, Blunt was being sought by Marvel Studios for a plum role in Iron Man 2, the sequel to its megahit 2008 Robert Downey Jr vehicle. The first Iron Man had already raked in more than $600million at the box office, which shocked industry insiders as the character had always been a B-list hero in the source comics. On top of that, Downey Jr, in the process of making a comeback following addiction issues with the law throughout the ‘90s and early ‘00s, had never anchored a movie of Iron Man’s scale and stature before.
Against the odds, the iron suit won audiences with oddball humour, incredible visuals, and blood-pumping pioneering action scenes, and Blunt was front and centre. Naturally, when beckoned by the chance to play the mysterious spy Natasha Romanova, AKA Black Widow, in the sequel, she was gushing. “I loved Iron Man,” she once told Howard Stern, “and I wanted to work with Robert Downey Jr”.
To the Sicario star’s horror, though, the signature she’d gleefully stamped her Devil Wears Prada contract with several years earlier came back to bite her in the ass. At that time, she was a struggling young actor making only her second Hollywood movie, so she probably would have signed any deal 20th Century Fox put in front of her. After all, she was going to work with Meryl Streep, who wouldn’t sign on the dotted line?
The problem was that the contract included an “optional picture deal”, meaning that Fox could legally require the actor to work on another one of the studio’s films when it saw fit. These kinds of stipulations are commonplace in Hollywood, and they don’t often result in a star being strong-armed into a movie. However, it has happened from time to time (just ask Edward Norton about the Italian Job remake), and Blunt fell afoul of it here.
Instead of signing up for a role that wound up making Scarlett Johansson roughly $60million for just the Black Widow solo movie, Blunt was cast as Princess Mary of the Lilliputs in a low-rent Jack Black comedy film adaptation of Jonathan Swift’s novel, Gulliver’s Travels. She did her best while nursing a desire to not be there, and when critics panned the film, she wasn’t surprised. “I didn’t want to do Gulliver’s Travels,” she admitted with a resigned sigh, “It was a bit of a heartbreaker for me”.
Ultimately, the hurt of missing out on a lucrative recurring role, thanks to her contract snafu, found fire in the principle of the thing. She wasn’t allowed to make her choice, and that didn’t sit right with her. “I take such pride in the decisions that I make,” she stressed, “and they mean so much to me, the films that I do”. Rest assured, she’s always had her lawyers keep an eagle eye out for sneaky stipulations ever since.
