I came across this thread on Reddit the other day that caught my attention:
Bruce Willis was offered $3 million (for four days of work) to return in The Expendables 3 (2014), but turned it down because he wanted $4 million instead. Sylvester Stallone and "everybody else involved" rejected Willis' demand and moved on by replacing him with Harrison Ford within 72 hours.
Of course, the thread descended into a chorus of dissent.
“Wow, what a dick.”
“Disgusting!”
“Greedy a**hole.”
“Hollywood elites have forgotten the weight of workman boots.”
(Alright — that last comment was entirely made up by me. What can I say, I got caught up in the pandemonium 😬).
Then, among the sea of disgust, came two comments of light and, dare I say, wisdom:
Bruce's quote for the last 10 years of his career was $1mil per day.
Fair.
Assuming that’s true — as my fingers are too weary to do a Google search — then it just shows Bruce had integrity (a rare trait in Hollywood indeed).
Then there was this reply:
Interesting because it's easy to think "greedy", but it could easily have been a "I don't want to do this but if they end up paying me that much money I'd be silly to say no".
^ I resonated most with this one.
While most will surely have deemed Bruce guilty of greed and holding their character for ransom, I think there’s every chance he just didn’t want to feature in the series again.
It happens.
Actors/actresses get bored or don’t enjoy working with certain people and so, move on.
Such is life.
Reminds me of when Matthew McConaughey went on a 2-year sabbatical after Hollywood wouldn’t grant him roles beyond rom-coms.
An entire 365 days went by, and he didn’t hear a peep.
(Rumour has it his name wasn’t so much as murmured by directors.)
He made peace with the prospect that he had written his own ticket out of the film industry when, deep into this hiatus, came his first offer in over a year.
Surprise, surprise, it was for a rom-com.
$5 million, I believe.
He rejected it on sight, so what did they do?
They offered him $10 million.
Again, he tore up the cheque.
Only once he rejected $14 million (which he admits was incredibly tough to do) did Hollywood finally take him seriously and give him the roles he craved most as an artist.
Don’t quote me, but I believe The Lincoln Lawyer was his first.
Just goes to show that, while integrity doesn’t always win out, when it does, it can sure lead to some great work.
Long-time Legionnaires will know integrity is at the centre of everything I do here at Watson HQ.
I refused to sell out my creativity, so I chose to self-publish.
I refused to be beholden to algorithms and book retailers, so I manually built my Storehouse.
I refused to price my books for less than a couple of bucks, so they don’t end up getting lost in people’s towering TBRs.
I refused to follow every other author in epic fantasy and write door-stopping tomes…
So I wrote The Divided Region.
And if you’d like to see exactly what rules I’ve broken, you can do so by going here:
https://djjwatsonstore.com/products/TDR-Bundle
DJJW