The awful movie Kim Basinger went bankrupt for quitting: “Hundreds of people lost their jobs”
Contracts aren’t always worth the paper they’re printed on in Hollywood, but there’s a reason why studios have so many legal eagles ready, willing, and able to mount a challenge. On one hand, Kim Basinger managed to avoid starring in a Razzie-winning movie. On the other, it ruined her financially.
When faced with the choice of appearing in a terrible film or going bankrupt, at least 99% of actors would choose the former for obvious reasons. Unfortunately, Basinger’s sudden cold feet at the prospect of headlining a provocative thriller created a catastrophic domino effect that made everyone a loser, even if she definitely came off the worst.
Writer and director Jennifer Lynch’s debut screenplay, Boxing Helena, created plenty of interest in Tinseltown. The early 1990s was the perfect time to release a psychosexual potboiler, with the subgenre at its peak following the success of Basic Instinct, Fatal Attraction, and others of a similar ilk.
The story of a surgeon developing a dangerous obsession with his neighbour and then viewing her as the perfect subject for some grisly procedures captured Madonna’s imagination, with the musical superstar and occasional actor signing on to play the lead role. However, she dropped out at the last minute, grinding Boxing Helena to a halt.
Basinger was brought in as her replacement, but shortly before the start of principal photography, she requested drastic overhauls to the script. When the producers and studio refused, she quit the picture and was slapped with an $8 million lawsuit for reneging on her agreement to play the lead role.
“Hundreds of people lost their jobs because she backed out,” producer Carl Mazzocone raged to Entertainment Weekly. “From now on, when a star says commit, it will mean commit,” Basinger explained her decision, suggesting that no number of revisions would save an awful script.
“I told her they were laughable,” she said of Lynch’s rewrites. “I told her it was like bad television, the worst television writing in history.” Still, the case proceeded to the courtroom, and even though the major players behind Boxing Helena didn’t get everything they wanted, they got enough to plunge their former star into the throes of bankruptcy.
A judge ruled that she needed to pay the studio almost $9 million, which saw her file for bankruptcy because she obviously didn’t have that kind of money lying around. She did appeal, though, but the $3.8 million settlement she ended up handing over to her litigators wasn’t enough to prevent the financial vultures from circling.
Going bankrupt from a film she wasn’t even in must have hurt, but if there’s any sliver of a silver lining to be found, it’s that she didn’t end up headlining a resoundingly panned picture that won Lynch a Razzie for ‘Best Director’ and died a slow, painful, and embarrassing death at the box office.
