The unmade movie Sean Connery sued after he retired: “Considerable time, effort and money”
In Tinseltown, lawsuits aren’t uncommon. In fact, they’re a dime a dozen.
However, an icon like Sean Connery suing a production company for a movie that never got made, after he’s already retired? That’s a bit unusual.
In the final years of his career, it’s been well-documented how Connery had a hard time reconciling what was going on in the movie business. He was famously offered the role of Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, including 15% of the worldwide box office takings, which would have netted him an astronomical $450million. He could never quite wrap his head around all the fantasy gobbledygook in the script, though, so he turned it down flat.
Similarly, around this period, Connery was also offered the part of the irritatingly verbose Architect in The Matrix sequels and Albus Dumbledore in the Harry Potter series. The actor had little desire to get involved in sci-fi or franchise filmmaking at the time, so once again, he said no. Then, after seeing how massively lucrative all these films were at the box office, he set aside his better judgment and made the mistake that would ultimately prompt him to walk away from moviemaking entirely.
In truth, Connery’s decision to sign up for 2003’s big-budget comic book special effects extravaganza The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen ended two careers. He made the movie because he’d missed out on three projects that proved successful, but that he had no affinity for, and surprise, surprise, he didn’t really like LXG either.
However, the film’s production was also a troubled affair, and Connery constantly butted heads with director Stephen Norrington, claiming the inexperienced English filmmaker should be “locked up for insanity”. In the end, the movie was a critical disaster, Norrington never directed again, and Connery quit acting in utter frustration.
“I’m fed up with the idiots,” Connery grumbled in 2005 when asked by the New Zealand Herald why he retired. “The ever-widening gap between people who know how to make movies and the people who green-light the movies.” The iconic James Bond star added that he didn’t think every studio head, producer, or writer in Hollywood was an idiot, but, for him, there were far too many that fell into that category.
After leaving the idiots behind, though, Connery must have felt sore about packing in the career he’d dedicated his entire adult life to – or maybe he just had some scores to settle. Whatever the case, after he quietly retired, he set about getting some recompense from someone he believed jerked him around in his final years in Hollywood.
In October 2002, Connery filed suit to the tune of $17m against Madalay Pictures and its chairman, Peter Guber, alleging that the producer’s company intentionally misrepresented its ability to finance a movie called End Game, which Connery signed up for in 1999. He agreed to star and produce that film, a thriller about an ageing CIA agent presumably doing exciting ageing CIA agent stuff.
He subsequently spent “considerable time, effort and money” developing the project to a point where he felt comfortable that shooting could begin, but when he began meeting with prospective directors, Mandalay suddenly went radio silent. All communication with Guber and his company was cut off, and the movie fell by the wayside, never to be made.
This situation stuck in Connery’s craw, and he wanted to extract his pound of flesh in the form of compensation for damages and “lost opportunities”. Mandalay retorted by saying the star’s suit was “frivolous and without any merit,” but a year later, reached an undisclosed out-of-court settlement with Connery that was reported as an “amicable resolution”.
Intriguingly, it was also suggested that Connery would continue to develop End Game, but alas, that never came to pass, and to this day, we’ll never know what kind of adventure that veteran CIA agent would have become embroiled in.
