The one movie Denzel Washington didn’t want to make: “The studio didn’t care”
Common sense would dictate that Denzel Washington isn’t going to do anything that he doesn’t want to do, largely because he’s Denzel Washington. He’s an A-list superstar, one of the biggest draws in the business, and a two-time Academy Award-winning icon who hasn’t auditioned in four decades.
And yet, he ended up making a movie that he didn’t want to be a part of, which was made patently clear when he quit the project before eventually returning to the fold. The studio bigwigs couldn’t have cared less that he was so against the idea, and some manoeuvring behind the scenes made it sound as if he only starred in the film out of a sense of respect and loyalty.
In the end, the high-octane thriller made almost $190million at the box office and scored some of the best reviews that have ever greeted Washington’s action-orientated output, so maybe it wasn’t the worst decision in the world that the lure of working with an old friend and regular collaborator proved too much to resist.
Having already made Crimson Tide, Man on Fire, Deja Vu, and The Taking of Pelham 123 together, Washington would gladly lead the line on a Tony Scott set. That became a little more complicated when Unstoppable was being developed after the runaway train flick was subjected to some penny-pinching from the boardroom.
Scott signed on as director in March 2009, with Washington and Chris Pine announced a month later. However, thanks to some belt-tightening on 20th Century Fox’s part, the budget was reduced by over $10million, the filmmaker’s fee was cut by $3million, and Washington was asked to reduce his own salary by $4million. He refused; by July, he was no longer attached to Unstoppable.
It was only a brief severing of ties, and Washington was brought back after a new financial offer was made, not that he was thrilled about it. “To be honest, I didn’t want to do the movie,” he told the LA Times. “The studio didn’t care. I said, ‘I don’t want to do it’, and they said, ‘Good, get out’. I said, ‘Fine’. But then Tony said, ‘I don’t want to do it unless he does it’. The way it was told to me, he said, ‘If he’s out, I’m out.'”
Washington was ready to walk away from Unstoppable altogether, and Fox didn’t seem to mind. Losing a star of his magnitude would have been a huge blow, but losing a director less than three months before the shooting would have been a disaster. Scott refused to make it without the actor, and after being placed between a rock and a hard place, the studio ultimately relented and remunerated Washington to a satisfactory degree, even if he still didn’t really want to do it.
