The movie Edward Norton was forced to make: “My real fans should give this a miss”
Every actor has at least one movie they regret starring in, and while it’s far from being the worst entry in his filmography, Edward Norton was essentially threatened into a project he couldn’t have cared less about when the spectre of legal action was dangled over his head.
Earning an Academy Award nomination for ‘Best Supporting Actor’ in the very first feature of his career, it was evident from Primal Fear alone that Norton was headed nowhere other than the top, which was further hammered home when American History X – still just his fifth big screen credit – landed him his second Oscar nod and first for ‘Best Actor’.
As the facilitators of his rise to prominence, Paramount both safeguarded its investment on the then-unknown while keeping him in its back pocket for further down the line when he was certifiable star by signing Norton to a three-picture deal, although he was at least able to pick and choose which production would fulfil those obligations. For a while, at least.
Every time Paramount came knocking on his door with a script, he’d turn them down, and the company ended up becoming so frustrated it hinted taking 20th Century Fox to court when Norton signed on for David Fincher’s Fight Club after three years of repeatedly rejecting the studio that held an option on his on-camera involvement.
The terms were renegotiated, Norton agreed to one more film for Paramount, but there was still an impasse over what that movie would be. Running out of patience, the studio informed him that he’d be starring in the Mark Wahlberg-led remake of Michael Caine classic The Italian Job, and if he refused then there would more than likely be a multi-million dollar lawsuit for him to contend with.
When the Los Angeles Times quizzed him on his starring role, Norton made his stance perfectly clear. “My contract with Paramount explicitly forbids me from discussing the film or the nature of my employment without their permission,” he said. “And they have very definitively not given me permission to discuss it.”
In effect, what he’s saying is ‘I didn’t want to be in The Italian Job, but if I say that out loud, I’ll get sued’. Befitting his interest levels, then, Norton phoned it in as the villainous Steve Frazelli in the surprisingly-OK do-over, although he did tell the world that “my real fans should give this a miss” if they were only interested in seeing him bring his A-game to the table.
For Paramount, “it was getting to the point where legally we had reasons we needed to exercise the option,” but doing so in a frivolous and mildly successful action thriller was hardly the worst possible outcome for Norton.
