The $17m role John Travolta quit days before shooting
After the success of Pulp Fiction, John Travolta became one of the most sought-after actors in Hollywood, with a series of hit films that elevated his stardom (and earnings) through the roof. With the subsequent release of Get Shorty, Face/Off and Michael, the actor was making the most of his heightened fame and booking back-to-back projects. However, there was one in particular that was set to be Travolta’s biggest role, which he suddenly pulled out of just days before shooting.
The insidious director Roman Polanski was set to make a movie called The Double in 1996, with Travolta’s agent negotiating him a $17million dollar deal to star in it. It was initially intended to be an adaptation of the book by Dostoyevsky, with Isabelle Adjani joining the cast opposite Travolta and John Goodman in a supporting role. The film was greenlit and all ready to go, with Sony’s subsidiary company Mandalay Entertainment producing the project, with a release date set for 1997.
However, due to the technical logistics of shooting a movie with a rapist, the film could not be shot in America due to the director’s active evasion of being jailed. Polanski had fled the United States in the seventies to avoid prison, and if he ever visited the country again, then he would risk being captured by the authorities. But because it’s Hollywood, this didn’t stop him from working and making new films in what is a damning reflection of the film industry and the importance of women’s safety.
The shot was scheduled to take place in Polanski’s hideout spot in France, and Travolta travelled over in May of 1996 to begin the rehearsal period before the shoot. However, things quickly fell apart and Travolta left the set just a few days into filming, with alleged disputes over some rewrites to his character, with the actor and director apparently arguing on set.
It was reported that Polanski had added a nude scene to the film without consulting Travolta, and the actor didn’t see any need for this to be included, prompting him to quit the project entirely. While Polanski attempted to keep the film afloat, it inevitably fell apart, and the film was killed.
In the following months, many conflicting perspectives were voiced, all with differing versions of why the film had been such a huge failure. Polanski claimed he hadn’t liked Travolta’s acting style, and Travolta had to employ a team of lawyers to avoid the legal ramifications of dropping out of the film, with the production companies understandably very unhappy. It eventually came to trial in court six months later, and the case didn’t reach a settlement until 2001.
While Polanski’s version of this story thankfully never came to the screen, it was later adapted in 2013 by Richard Ayoade, with Jesse Eisenberg and Mia Wasikowska in the cast. Usurpingly, neither of them were paid anything close to $17m, but at least it was made, which is far more than Polanski can ever say.
