After what producer Christine Vachon called a “nightmare” situation, it looks like a major decision will be made soon in regard to possible legal action taken against Joaquin Phoenix. Last week, the actor walked out of Todd Haynes’ 1930s gay detective movie, causing millions in losses.
Puck’s Matt Belloni is being told that the film’s producers are meeting today to discuss options, including suing Phoenix. Apparently, there’s a very good breach of contract case here, at least to recoup the money already invested in the project, to say nothing of the cast and crew’s lost wages.
There’s also been dialogue with WME and lawyer David Weber, and a possibility has arisen for Phoenix to pay a portion of the lost financing. If Phoenix doesn’t pay all of these people back then he risks having seriously bad optics shadowing him throughout the fall as he promotes “Joker: Folie a Deux.”
As far as European money goes, Belloni states that French production company MK2, plus a group of equity investors, “together have sunk a few million dollars into this movie, and they’d very much like that back now.” To not get sued, Phoenix would have to likely pay all of these people, and the tab is absolutely in the millions. It’s a disastrous situation for the actor, and all because, if rumors are true, he did not want to perform explicit gay sex scenes in the movie.
As for re-casting Phoenix in the film, Belloni says that is not an option, unless Brad Pitt suddenly becomes available. Given Phoenix’s unique box office appeal, thanks to ‘Joker,’ and his arthouse credentials, it would be all but impossible to recast the actor for a role that calls for “full-frontal and explicit gay sex.”
Apparently, the always unpredictable Phoenix does this a lot. He’s had cold feet before, bowing out of “Joker” and Mike Mills’ “C’mon C’mon”, before finally being convinced to come back to those respective productions. No such luck occurred on Haynes’ film.
It’s Phoenix who actually came up with the idea of creating the gay film with Haynes. Haynes repeatedly mentioned in interviews that, while brainstorming the project, Phoenix kept pushing him and going “no, let’s go further with the sex,” to the point where Haynes firmly believed that its MPA rating would have to be NC-17.