Ridley Scott’s projects, sometimes due to their significant scale, end up having major or unexpected complications. Good often comes out of them, because He is usually decisive and knows how to finish on time. Sometimes, because you are handling several boats at the same time, problems arise beforehand that are most curious. Even in some of his best movies.
Before directing it himself, American Gangster was being developed by Universal Pictures with director Antoine Fuqua, and was also going to star Denzel Washington but with Benicio del Toro co-starring instead of Russell Crowe. The project was progressing for months, and was going to start filming in October 2004.
However, everything changed. Fuqua was fired from the film just four weeks before filming began. Despite having done all the work of pre-production and rewriting the script, the studio saw too many creative differences to move forward. For a couple of years the project was paralyzed, until the director of Napoleon was available and interested in telling an epic crime story.
Paid yes or yes
Scott agreed to direct a couple of years after the firing was announced, bringing in Crowe for the detective role and keeping Washington as the criminal, even though it was rumored for months that Will Smith could replace him. He finally opted for the leading duo that made the film shine, although his other original actor was not left empty-handed.
‘Napoleon’ has an epic battle that wants to rival ‘Gladiator’: “300 men and 100 horses”
Del Toro received 5 million dollars from Universal despite not filming a single second of the final film. The actor, like Washington, had stipulated that they would be paid regardless of whether the film was made or not. In Denzel’s case it was 20 million, which was not paid again when he agreed to continue with the project, although he did accept a bonus in case the film made a profit. Which he ended up doing, with $266.5 million raised worldwide.
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2023-11-24 10:22:42
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