When Kevin Costner rejected a $20m studio peace offering: “He turned us down”
The process of making movies often boils down to the eternal battle between art and commerce, with the battlefield being the accumulation of creative and practical choices. Few actors have embodied this conflict quite like Kevin Costner, who developed a reputation over the years of being fiercely vociferous in his views and extremely awkward to deal with if things didn’t go his way.
A great example of this came in 1999, when Costner became embroiled in a game of brinksmanship with Universal Pictures over the final cut of his third major film centred around America’s pastime, baseball. For Love of the Game tells the story of 40-year-old pitcher Billy Chapel trying to attain a perfect game in his last outing for the Detroit Tigers, all while reminiscing about his relationship with girlfriend Jane. The movie was directed by Sam Raimi, who took a detour from horror in the late ’90s, and it was such a personal project for Costner that the opening credits included home videos of his childhood with his beloved father.
In order to keep the movie’s budget to a reasonable $50million, Costner agreed to waive his standard fee at the time – an eye-watering $20m – and took a cut of the backend profits instead. For this, he was given final cut, meaning he had creative control over the film, not the studio. However, he would only get this if the movie was less than two hours and ten minutes long and achieved a PG-13 rating with the Motion Picture Association of America.
However, when Costner and Raimi delivered the film, Universal wasn’t happy. The movie was two hours and 17 minutes long, for one thing, although the studio relaxed its demands there and allowed it to stay at that length. The real problem, though, was that the film was slapped with an R-rating because it included two F-bombs, which is one more than the MPAA allows in a PG-13 film. So, Universal ordered the line of dialogue containing the second swear word to be rerecorded, and it also cut ten seconds from the film. Thus, the movie was granted its desired rating. Then Costner went into business for himself by blasting Universal in the press.
Why Kevin Costner turned down $20m over a single F-bomb
“For Universal, this movie has always been about the length and the rating,” a grumpy Costner told Newsweek a few weeks before the film opened. “It’s never been about the content. You feel a studio would want to release the best version of the movie, not the one they think appeals to the biggest common denominator.”
Costner admitted he was disappointed that the studio didn’t even attempt to fight the MPAA on the matter, and he mused, “The love of the movies, I believe, is waning.”
Naturally, Universal executives were irate with Costner, whom they believed had jeopardised the film’s box office potential. Co-chairman Stacey Snider even told The Los Angeles Times, “Kevin’s not the director and it’s not fair for him to hijack a $50-million asset,” before adding, “Our feeling is that we have backed the filmmaker, and his name is Sam Raimi, not Kevin Costner.”
To Costner, though, Universal bowing so easily to the MPAA wasn’t a simple compromise; it meant the studio was agreeing to release an inferior version of the film. His pal Armyan Bernstein claimed that Costner “felt that even if the studio lost the ratings fight, it should still put out the film as an R because it should put out the best possible movie.” When Universal didn’t do this, Costner strongly believed it revealed he was never considered a true creative partner by the studio.
Amazingly, in a move that showed how much Universal valued Costner, even if he could be difficult to work with, the studio offered to pay him $20m for the fee he waived. “We said, ‘If you feel cheated, we’ll write you a $20m cheque today,'” Snider claimed. “And he turned us down.”
Yes, that’s right—Costner said “No thanks” to the studio’s $20m peace offering because of ten seconds of a 137-minute movie being cut. Maybe he was sticking to his principles, or perhaps he was still banking on the film being a huge hit, which would make him much, much more than $20m when his backend profits were tallied.
Ultimately, though, the movie was a box office dud, so nobody came out on top.
