“I can’t be bought”: the movie Ridley Scott refused to direct, not even for $20m
Even though he doesn’t make inexpensive movies all that often, and has spent the last three decades of his career painting on Hollywood’s most epic and costly canvases, Ridley Scott hasn’t been swayed by the allure and virtually unlimited resources of the industry’s biggest franchises.
He knows how to launch them, although his Alien is markedly different from the sci-fi blockbusters the series would eventually morph into, and if you count Prometheus and Covenant as prequels on a technicality, he didn’t direct a sequel to one of his own films until 2024’s Gladiator II, which came 47 years and 27 features after his debut, The Duellists.
Of course, he stepped in to replace Jonathan Demme to helm Hannibal, the follow-up to The Silence of the Lambs, so he isn’t averse to playing in another filmmaker’s sandbox. That was a one-time thing, though, and he revealed that he declined an offer to direct Top Gun: Maverick because he didn’t want to interfere with his brother, Tony, and his legacy.
Nine of Scott’s last 13 pictures have cost at least $100 million to produce, but when he was asked to take the reins on what was the single most expensive movie ever made at the time, he wasn’t interested in putting the Alien-shaped shoe on the other foot and replacing James Cameron on Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.
“I’m proud about this,” he told The Guardian. “I turned down a $20 million fee. See, I can’t be bought, dude. Someone said, ‘Ask what Arnie gets’. I thought, ‘I’ll try it out’. I said, ‘I want what Arnie gets’. When they said yes, I thought, ‘Fuck me’. But I couldn’t do it. It’s not my thing. It’s like doing a Bond movie. The essence of a Bond movie is fun and camp. Terminator is pure comic strip. I would try to make it real. That’s why they’ve never asked me to do a Bond movie, because I could fuck it up.”
Not only was Terminator 3 the costliest undertaking that the industry had ever seen, but Arnold Schwarzenegger’s deal to return as the titular cyborg was awash with small print that gave him serious levels of control and influence. Somebody as brash and outspoken as Scott may not have fared very well under those restrictions, so he stuck to his principles and told them where to shove their money.
Once Cameron had officially passed on returning to the sci-fi franchise he created, producers Mario Kassar and Andrew Vajna set their sights high. In the summer of 2000, Scott was mentioned as being on the shortlist of potential directors alongside David Fincher and Roland Emmerich, with Christian Duguay the odd man out, since he hadn’t really made anything of note.
In the end, it wasn’t any of those names to get the nod, with Jonathan Mostow confirmed in early 2001, securing himself a pay packet that was 75% less than the $20 million carrot dangled in front of Scott. Could he have made a good Terminator flick? Probably. Did he even want to try? Clearly not.
